A funny thing happened to me this morning. As it is Sept 11, I went to CNN.com (not that I go there that often).

CNN international edition: Not ONE reference to 9/11.
Hmmm, how odd, I think and go onto CNN US edition.
Guess what: not 1 reference.
So I check the European edition, yep, you’ve guessed it: Not ONE reference either.

With great sorrow I must announce the passing of John O'Neill. Recently retired after more than ten years spearheading the chase of public enemy number one and those that shared his beliefs, John was the new Director of Security of the WTC that was annihilated on 11 Sept. True to his heroic past he remained in the WTC to assist those who needed escape and was seen returning to the towers despite impending doom...

As this message traffic is traveling across four corners of the world I must be self limiting. Suffice to say in many of this countries' worst private and public moments..he provided the options and leadership to save lives and rid the world of the heinous..

Thank you John for returning me to my family so I may enjoy every possible moment with my son and daughter.
Your fight is over, rest, for round two belongs to the loyal.
Here's to "DDG/67" "fast-movers" "fins on the horizon" and "Viking burial."

God Bless America

mike331

What causes opponents to come of their own accord is the prospect of gain. What discourages opponents from coming is the prospect of harm.

Sun Tzu-The Art of War

…

Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2001 10:27 AM
From: COMSEUR;
Subject: LM CAT: in memoriam
Importance: High
Taps.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The body of John P. O'Neill, a former assistant director of the FBI and an expert on terrorism, was recovered Friday from the rubble of the World Trade Center.
O'Neill had recently retired from the FBI and had just taken over security for the World Trade Center, said New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
"That Tuesday was his first or second day on the job," Kerik said Friday in an interview with CNN's Larry King Live. . "He was going to go into One World Trade, the tower one, and when the strike came he went into the second tower in an attempt to help people get out of the building and he died there. We found his body today."
O'Neill, 50, was the chief of international terrorism operations for the FBI. He supervised on-site investigations of the bombing by terrorists of the USS Cole in Yemen last year, and the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
A 1996 article published in the Van Impe Intelligence Briefing quoted O'Neill as saying, "No longer is it just the fear of being attacked by international terrorist organizations -- attacks against Americans and American interests overseas. A lot of these groups now have the capability and the support infrastructure in the United States to attack us here if they choose to do so."
In a 1997 speech to a meeting of the National Strategy Forum in Chicago, he called Afghanistan's conflict with Russia "a major watershed event" in terrorism.
Aided by the United States, Afghanistan "beat one of the largest standing armies in the world at that time, which gave them a buoyed sense of success and that they could take on other countries like the U.S. and be likewise successful," he said.
"John was a very good friend ... a great guy, a patriotic American," said New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "Our hearts and sympathy and condolences go out to his family."
….

A record of events of the George W. Bush Administration

Not all is bad, not all is good. This record is public domain, distribute if you will...

Jan 2001: Establishes a Ministry of Religion ("Office of Faith Based Activities") for the explicit purpose of giving tax money to religions for recruiting ("Cannot prevent them from carrying out their core mission"). Contrary to Republican dogma, religious institutions had never been prevented from accepting government money for public services; Catholic Charities a prominent example. The only current restrictions are that the tax money cannot be embezzeled, and it cannot be used for promoting a specific religion; It is these two restrictions that Bush and his supporters in Congress have spoken their intent to do away with.

Jan 2001: Declares January 21 a national Day of Prayer, and calls upon all citizens to pray to the Judeo-monotheistic God on this day.

Jan 2001: Delays the release of documents from the Reagan administration until June 21. The law states that these documents must be released January 21, but Reagan had issued a declaration that any sitting administration may delay the release of the documents or invoke executive privilege to prevent them from being released.

Jan 2001: Appoints Michael Powell as head of the Federal Communications Commission. Powell, a deregulationist and son of General Colin Powell, has been an FCC Commissioner since 1997. The National Association of Broadcasters calls this "an outstanding choice".

Jan 22, 2001: Signs an executive order forbidding federal funding of foreign aid groups that discuss abortion in the context of family planning.

Jan 2001: Tells the Food and Drug Administration to "re-evaluate" RU-486, the recently approved abortion pill that has been used for over a decade in Europe with no ill effects on the health of its takers and whose introduction into the US has been held up for reasons of politics, not health.

Jan 2001: Proposes the immediate construction of an anti-ICBM missile system, violating international treaty and using current technology that has failed in every test that was not later found to have been rigged for it to succeed, and even failed in some of those. Constructing such a system while pursuing an aggressive foreign policy encourages "rogue nations" to launch a first strike, and having such a system would encourage rogue Presidents to launch a first strike against nations that don't.

Feb 3, 2001: Unrelated: Federal lawyers move to block rules that would make it easier for mine workers to receive black lung benefits. Bush had made a campaign promise to support such benefits.

Feb 6, 2001: Congressman Charlie Norwood abandons his support of the bipartisan "Patients' Bill of Rights" legislation which he had sponsored in a previous session, having been told that the President wanted his own version passed instead.

Feb 6, 2001: Closes the Office of National AIDS Policy and the office of race relations("Office of One America"), both of which had been started by the previous president, Clinton. Their duties are given to the Office of Domestic Policy and the Office of Public Liaison.

Feb 2001: Tells Congress not to create a panel to investigate irregularities in the presidential election.

Feb 2001: Appoints John Ashcroft, a conservative who opposed school racial integration as recently as 1985 and had violated his state Constitution to embezzle state general funds to law enforcement, as Attorney General of the United States.

Feb 2001: Unrelated: A submarine giving a joyride to several of Bush's campaign contributors collides with a Japanese fishing boat, killing several people. Nobody apologizes for nearly a month. The admiral who illegally ordered the mission is not punished.

Bush's 2001-2002 budget introduced to Congress: * Eliminates program to equip poor and rural fire departments with modern fire fighting equipment * Cuts program for preparing for natural disasters that would reduce damages caused by earthquake, flood, etc; * Removes existing funds from Social Security and Medicaid accounts. * Includes oversized tax cut, lopsided towards the wealthy. Bush and his supporters claim that every household would get a $1600 tax cut, but this is the mean average; As the cut is tilted towards wealthy households, the median average household(half earn more, half earn less) will save $450. The tax cut is part of an economic policy assuming that the economy from 2000 to 2010 will grow at the same rate as it did from 1997 to 1999, when in fact the economy in 2001 is shrinking, there has been no recorded period of sustained growth longer than 7 years in the American economy, and the 1997-1999 timeframe is well known as an aberrational period of heavy investment. * Eliminates the estate tax. Bush supporters claim that this tax affects all Americans and harms the economy by putting small family farms and businesses into bankruptcy. In reality, the tax only affects estates over $675,000 and legislation has already passed that will increase the amount not taxed to $1 million, and after taxes inherited businesses still have more value than was taken out and can be sold, leaving the inheritor with a profit and somebody else with a small family farm or business. Family farms themselves have a $4.1 million exemption from the estate tax. * Reduces staff in the Securities and Exchange Commission's fraud investigations and enforcement department. * Cuts $200 million from a welfare program to support child care costs. * Cuts aid to Russia for securing Russia's nuclear materials from theft. * Cuts $180 million from energy conservation programs.

Feb 2001: Unrelated: Workplace safety regulations, advanced by prominent Republican Elizabeth Dole and which had passed with both parties' support after fifteen years of debate, repealed by Congress with Bush offering rhetorical support. Estimates of the regulations' possible cost to the economy ran from over $100 billion annually, the estimate the Republican party used, to a /savings/ of over $4 billion annually due to fewer injuries and lawsuits, the figure calculated by the government accounting office.

Mar 2001: Interferes with the free market by forbidding airline workers who have not had a contract with their employer in years from refusing to work.

Mar 2001: Unrelated: A U.S. Geological Survey cartographer is fired after releasing inaccurate maps of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an act outside his job duties. Removing the refuge's park status and industrializing the area was a core issue of Bush's campaign.

Mar 2001: Reneges on campaign promise to cut back on polluting carbon dioxide emissions. This promise gained the support of many inattentive voters who haven't looked into his record in Texas; polls showed a significant portion of respondents considered Bush more likely to act to help the environment than candidate Gore, who had authored a book about environmentalism, has a decades-long record of supporting the environment in rhetoric and legislation, and is roundly considered a treehugging nutjob.

Mar 20, 2001: Rescinds regulation on arsenic content in drinking water, returning to a limit that was established before high amounts were known to cause cancer.

Mar 2001: Announces plans to end a program which had increased the number of police officers countrywide by 85,000 by paying 75% of the first three years' wages of rookie officers.

Mar 2001: Unrelated: Supporters of the Bush tax plan hold an astroturf party, in which rich lobbyists organized by House speaker Dennis Hastert don "REAL WORKER" clothes and successfully pass themselves off as day laborers. A memo describing the set up is leaked shortly afterwards.

Mar 2001: Unrelated: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights finds that Democrats in Florida were specifically targeted to have their votes thrown out or to be prevented from voting at all in the 2000 Presidential election. Bush had won the crucial state by fewer than 1,000 votes out of over six million cast.

Mar 2001: Unrelated: Congress passes a bankruptcy bill that makes it harder for people to eliminate their debt by declaring bankruptcy, and places credit card debt at the same priority as unpaid child support. The bill also wipes out debt caused by certain failed investments in foreign lands. Congress had passed this bill earlier, but it had been vetoed by Clinton.

Mar 2001: Tells South Korea to stop seeking friendly relations with North Korea. North Korea subsequently cancels peace talks with the United States.

Mar 2001: Ends US involvement in the Kyoto Treaty. No alternative is proposed.

Mar 2001: Ends the decades-old policy of having the American Bar Association review judicial appointments, claiming that the organization shows a liberal bias.

Mar 2001: Unrelated: Mike Dombeck, chief of the U.S. Forest Service resigns in protest over Bush's pro-industry leanings and rhetoric.

Mar 2001: Rescinds a rule that had prevented the government from doing business with organizations that had defrauded it in the past or had violated federal labor or environmental laws.

Mar 22, 2001: Appoints Claude Allen as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services. As Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Allen had opposed a health insurance program that would have covered abortion in the case of rape or incest because it did not restrict this coverage solely to cases where the life of the mother was endangered.

Mar 28, 2001: Closes the Office on Womens' Issues, assigning its duties to the Office of Public Liaison.

Mar 30, 2001: The Department of Health and Human Services declares that Medicaid will not pay for the abortion drug RU-486 except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the life of the mother.

April 2001: Unrelated: An American reconnaissance plane and a Chinese interceptor collide over international waters in the South China Sea, killing the interceptor's pilot. China captures the American plane and holds its crew hostage for 11 days.

April 2001: Unrelated: A major portion of Bush's tax plan, the elimination of the estate tax, passes the House of Representatives by a 271-154 vote. A Democratic countermeasure to eliminate all estate tax on transferred assets under 2.5 million dollars was defeated 227-201 as Republicans said it doesn't do enough to protect small family farms and small family businesses; Under existing law, $675,000 of an estate is exempt from tax, scheduled to raise to $1m in 2002, and family farms are given a $4.1m exemption. Democratic representative Ronnie Shows of Mississippi, who voted with the Republicans, claims that eliminating the estate tax will encourage hard work.

April 2001: Pressures Canada to drill in the Northwest Territories. Verbatim quote: "There's gas in this hemisphere. I want it to be American gas."

April 2001: Unrelated: The Texas legislature, under a $1 billion annual deficit from former Governor George W. Bush's tax cut plan, passes an emergency appropriations bill and asks the federal government for assistance.

April 4, 2001: Under pressure from liberal consumer groups, backs off from a plan to eliminate salmonella testing of meat destined for public school lunches. The testing, which was recently started under the Clinton administration, has lead to the rejection of 4% of meat as being spoiled.

April 2001: Appoints Mary Sheila Gall, a deregulationist, as Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Her appointment is rejected by the Senate in August.

April 2001: Creates an Energy Task Force, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and staffed by other former energy business executives. The task force's meetings are held in secret, no written documents are to be produced, members are not to speak about the task force to the media, and in any meetings with outsiders members are not to speak about the task force on the record.

April 24, 2001: Nominates to the positions of Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force: Thomas White, retired Brigadier General and Vice Chairman of Enron energy corporation; Gordon England, Vice President of a military supply corporation; and James Roche, Vice President of Northrop aircraft construction company and former director of Senate Armed Services Committee. These positions had previously been, respectively, unfilled and occupied by Gregory Dahlberg, former Staff Director of House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, unfilled and occupied by Robert Pixie, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and President of Essex corporation; and held by Whitten Peters, former Undersecretary of the Air Force and parter in the law firm of Williams and Connolly.

April 24, 2001: Unrelated: The Supreme Court decides 5-4 that police officers have the authority to arrest and jail anybody for any offense, no matter how minor. Justices for the decision were Souter, Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas.

April 2001: Rescinds a Forest Service rule that had prohibited construction of logging roads at government expense in nationally protected forestlands.

May 3, 2001: Unrelated: The United States is voted off the United Nations' Human Rights Commission. In retaliation, the United States Congress votes to not pay its full dues owed to the United Nations.

May 17, 2001: Unrelated: The State of California, after a year of paying far more for energy than other states and facing the bankruptcy of both its major power distributing companies, announces that whistleblowers inside the energy production companies have produced evidence of collusion to fraudulently constrict the supply of energy to California, that there has been a recorded pattern of power plants shutting down operations immediately after California announces a Level 1 emergency shortage and then coincidentally and simultaneously resuming operations when power blackouts have begun and the price of energy reaches a peak while the power plants owned by the faltering distribution industries have not shown this pattern, and that the State will be filing charges against the power producers within 60 days. During the crisis, the Republican-controlled Federal Energy Regulatory Committee, whose job is to institute price controls if energy prices get too high, has urged that California remove its own price controls on energy sold to consumers and to instead let consumers pay the full market price which has ranged from four to twenty times normal energy prices.

May 17, 2001: The Department of Health and Human Services announces that instead of traditionally sending the American Medical Association and associated groups as representatives at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the United States would be represented by anti-abortion groups such as the International Right to Life Federation and Family Research Council.

May 18, 2001: Paul O'Neill, Bush's secretary of the Treasury, announces his intention to eliminate all taxes for corporations and to eliminate Social Security pensions for the elderly.

May 24, 2001: Unrelated: Senator James Jeffords leaves the Republican party to become an independent, removing the Republican party's control of the Senate.

May 24, 2001: Unrelated: Theodore Olson, a prominent figure in the Arkansas Project which was part of what former First Lady Hillary Clinton termed the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to defame and oust the Clintons and their political allies, is appointed Solicitor General by the Senate.

May 26, 2001: The Guardian reports that the Enron energy company is screening applicants for Bush's energy commission. Furthermore, shortly after federal energy regulatory chairman Curtis Hebert was appointed, he received a phone call from Enron advising him to change his views to better suit the company. After refusing, Vice President Cheney announces that Hebert wasn't the right person for the job and will be replaced.

May 31, 2001: Edward Jurith, acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, ends a program to pay television networks to insert anti-drug propaganda into popular television shows which had started under the Clinton administration.

June 1, 2001: Unrelated: Prince Dipendra of Nepal murders most of Nepal's royal family in a drunken rage before killing himself. Prince Gyanendra is declared King.

June 2001: Announces his intent to increase trade protections for domestic steel producers. The steel industry had threatened to eliminate health insurance for retired workers if Bush did not support this.

June 2001: Announces an end to the use of the Vieques Island bombing range in Puerto Rico within two years. A significant increase in the local cancer rate has been blamed by some on heavy metals leaching into the water supply and on the Navy's use of radioactive depleted uranium weaponry. Within hours of the announcement, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England urges Congress to cancel a planned citizens' referendum on the matter. Should the population of Vieques vote against the bombing range in the referendum, the Navy would have to leave by 2003 as per the agreement between Clinton and Puerto Rico's former president.

June 2001: Unrelated: In a special election in Virginia, Republican candidate Randy Forbes defeats Democratic candidate Louise Lucas for a seat on the House of Representatives.

June 2001: Unrelated: The US convicts five Cubans of spying.

June 9, 2001: Delays the release of documents from the Reagan administration until August 31. The documents detail advice given to former President Ronald Reagan by his aides, many of whom are current Bush aides.

June 21, 2001: Unrelated: The House of Representatives votes 242-173 to prohibit industrialization of national monument areas.

June 2001: During the civil war in Macedonia, U.S. troops escort rebel soldiers from an area where government troops had gained control to a rebel-controlled area. Anti-U.S. rallies break out in several cities, and the Macedonian parliament is occupied by rioters angry that the rebels, who were believed to be close to surrender, were allowed to keep their arms.

June 25, 2001: Unrelated: The Supreme Court rules 5-4 that Congress has the authority to regulate spending by political parties.

June 25, 2001: Unrelated: Led by Republicans Trent Lott and Tim Hutchinson, 16 Senators urge the Department of Labor to abort its enforcement of labor laws on 51 poultry processing plants that had been underpaying workers.

June 25, 2001: Orders a special panel to review the labor dispute between American Airlines and its flight attendants. Bush's spokesman says the purpose of the panel is to delay any possible strike until after the July 4 holiday weekend.

June 26, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announces his intentions to cut the B1 bomber fleet by a third.

June 26, 2001: Unrelated: The World Court rules that the United States had violated the legal rights of two German citizens executed for murder, by not informing the German consulate of their arrest, trial, or conviction. One of the Germans had been executed in spite of a World Court order to delay the execution to allow Germany to present a case.

June 26, 2001: Unrelated: The House of Representatives votes 285-143 to stop the processing of applications for Mexican truckers to operate within the United States. The Democrat-backed measure is a violation of the U.S's obligations under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

June 2001: Unrelated: Democratic former Representative Charles Porter petitions to have impeached the five Supreme Court justices who voted to end the counting of votes in the disputed Presidential election. Over 600 law professors sign on to the petition.

June 2001: Unrelated: The Supreme Court decides in a 5-4 decision that commercial advertising is speech protected under the First Amendment, specifically revoking states' and localities' power to restrict tobacco advertising from childrens' school areas.

July 2 2001: After Vice President Dick Cheney's hospitalization to install a defibrillator for his heart, Associated Press reporter Scott Lindlaw reports on Cheney's good health and his activities after being released from the hospital, such as participating in radio interviews and discussing policy in staff meetings. Six hours after Lindlaw's report hits the newswire, Dick Cheney is released from the hospital.

July 2001: Unrelated: Pope John Paul II condemns the US's 40-year old economic embargo on Cuba.

July 2001: Unrelated: China bills the US $1,000,000 for the cost of storing the reconnaissance plane it captured in April.

July 14, 2001: A test of the anti-ballistic missile system that is the center of the national missile defense policy succeeds. Two weeks later, the Times of London reports that the missile carried a Global Positioning System device described in news reports as a "beacon". Pentagon spokesmen claim that the device did not affect the interceptor's guidance system. In the only other successful test of the system during the Clinton administration, the target warhead carried a GPS system which relayed its position to the interceptor.

July 18, 2001: Unrelated: James Howard Hatfield, author of the book Fortunate Son which accused Bush of having a cocaine habit, dies of a drug overdose. The book had been recalled and burned by its publisher after it was found out that Hatfield had been convicted of attempted murder of a former employer and embezzlement. Conspiracy theories begin circulating, as Hatfield had claimed his life was in danger since writing the book.

July 2001: Due to an amendment to Bush's tax legislation by former Democratic vice presidential candidate and still senator Joe Lieberman, American taxpayers begin receiving "tax rebate" cheques on the order of about $300 from the government, monies that will be accounted for by a reduction in the taxpayers' standard deduction in the next year's taxes. On the envelope that the cheques are mailed in is printed the Republican party's campaign slogan to promote Bush's tax cut plan. As Republican media claims that the "rebate" is "Bush's gift to the country", most Americans associate the cheques with the President.

July 2001: Tells World Bank to forgive debts to poor nations.

July 2001: Unrelated: Russian software developer Dmitri Sklyarov is arrested in the United States after giving a presentation at a data security conference on designing software to read certain forms of encrypted data. The lead attorney in the case, Robert Mueller, is being considered as a candidate for the top post in the FBI and in the upcoming weeks is confirmed as Director of the FBI.

July 2001: Unrelated: China convicts three Americans of spying and expels them from the country.

July 2001: Unrelated: Popular conservative radio and television talk show host Rush Limbaugh says that Democratic Senator Tom Daschle is the Devil. Days earlier, Dave Boyer of the Washington Times had claimed there was a coordinated right-wing conspiracy to demonize Daschle in the media.

July 2001: Requests that Congress grant him trade promotion authority, powers which Congress had granted to every president from Nixon to Bush Sr, and had denied to Clinton.

July 20, 2001: Unrelated: Author Vanessa Leggett is jailed on contempt of court for refusing to turn over research she had collected for her book about a murder case to a grand jury. Leggett had claimed protections under the Constitutions guarantee of freedom for the press. She is released in January after the grand jury disconvenes.

July 26, 2001: Jokes that "a dictatorship would be easier" than negotiating with Congress. Seven months earlier, Bush had joked about the vote-counting troubles in the presidential election, saying "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator."

July 2001: Unrelated: The House of Representatives votes to lower the allowable level of arsenic in public drinking water. Weeks later, the Senate also votes 97-1 to lower this limit.

July 2001: Unrelated: The population of Vieques Island in Puerto Rico votes 68% for the U.S. Navy to immediately withdraw from the island, 30% to allow for the Navy to remain indefinitely, and 2% for the Navy to remain until 2003.

August 2001: Unrelated: The House votes 265-162 to ban all forms of human cloning. A less restrictive bill that would have allowed cloning for scientific research failed, 178-249.

August 2001: A "Patients' Bill of Rights" bill passes that allows hospital patients to sue health maintenance organizations that deny them necessary care but would limit the punishments that judges and juries could declare, after Representative Charlie Norwood withdraws his support from another bill that did not have such a limit. Norwood explains his actions by saying that Bush had promised to veto the bill unless it had such a limit, and it was better for a watered-down bill to be passed than none at all.

August 2001: Unrelated: According to John Bresnahan and Mark Preston of Roll Call magazine, Cable News Network CEO Walter Isaacson meets with Republican political leaders to discuss how CNN could change its news format to be more attractive to Republican viewers. CNN television advertisements declare "We're changing everything to bring you better news."

August 2001: Unrelated: The U.S. Embassy in Australia is occupied by a non-violent group of Columbian protestors. Reuters reports that the protestors are speaking out against increasing U.S. anti-drug efforts in their home country, but the British Broadcasting Corporation reports that they are protesting the murder of trade unionists and union sympathizers by U.S. corporations such as Coca-Cola, which was recently implicated in the deaths and disappearances of fifty unionists.

August 2001: Unrelated: In Afghanistan, a vice squad raids and detains 24 members of the Shelter Now aid organization, which is described in news reports as being either U.S. or German based. Two Americans are among the detained. The detainees are charged with offense to God and promoting deviant acts by promoting Christianity. These crimes are punishable by death.

August, 2001: Unrelated: Berkeley, California city councilman Kriss Worthington convinces mayor Shirley Dean to cancel a traditional meeting with Japanese boy and girl Scouts from the 'sister city' of Sakai, because the Boy Scouts of America have a policy against hiring homosexual Scoutmasters. The Scouts of Japan have no such policy.

August 8, 2001: Unrelated: The Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters is evacuated due to a fire.

August 8, 2001: Unrelated: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a left-leaning media critic organization that publishes Extra magazine, releases a report on Fox News channel, describing it as "The Most Biased Name in News". The report describes Fox's hiring practices of asking the applicant his party affiliation and ending the meeting if the applicant is a Democrat or refuses to state, of Fox's most prominent news personalities giving speeches at Republican conventions, of an 8-1 ratio of Republican guests to Democrats, of shows devoted solely to far-right views, of an employee with prior experience as a CBS producer resigning after being told by the senior vice president to lie about statistics showing poor economic progress by blacks, and of a pattern of being hostile to Democrats and liberals while praising Republicans and conservatives. Fox advertises its news service as "straight news", "Fair and balanced, as always", "We report, you decide", while implying and outright stating that all other news sources, especially the slightly right-leaning CNN, are liberal owned and biased.

August 9, 2001: Declares his support for medical research involving "stem cells", the basic human cell type that all cells grow from, but says that research should be limited to stem cells that have already been extracted from human blastocysts. Both sides of the issue are angered by the compromise. In allowing federal funding for this research, Bush breaks a campaign promise not to. 61 senators vote to support the research.

August 9, 2001: Unrelated: The Pentagon pays China $34,000 for the cost of storing the EP-3 reconnaissance plane that China captured in April over international waters and for the cost of feeding the captured crew before they were released.

August 9, 2001: The Commerce Department imposes a 19.3% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber imports.

August 11, 2001: Declines Congressman Henry Waxman's request for a review of Bush political consultant Karl Rove's finances. The request came after Rove consulted with the heads of six companies he owned more than $100,000 worth of stock in.

August 13, 2001: Signs a $5.5 billion emergency farm subsidy. Such subsidies had been passed by Congress and signed by Clinton in the previous three years. Democrats had wanted a larger $7.5 billion subsidy.

August 14, 2001: Appoints former Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman Patrick Wood as the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

August 2001: The White House issues a report claiming that executive agencies discriminate against religious groups when funding charities.

August 14, 2001: Unrelated: Enron energy corporation CEO Jeffrey Skilling resigns after six months at a job newspapers said he was "groomed for", getting no compensation for leaving early by his own will.

August 15, 2001: Unrelated: The pro-gun organization Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership releases a long, paranoid essay written by L. Neil Smith and Aarol Zelman stating among other things that there is no such thing as a liberal, but that liberal is simply a word that socialists use to hide the fact that they are USSR-type socialists; That all socialists(meaning all liberals, meaning everyone more left wing than them) desire to murder, rape, and rob "on a scale Attila the Hun never dreamed of", not as a rhetorical device but as a statement of fact upon which further arguments are made; Condemns acts to write or change legislation to support the rights of gun owners as being done by people who would "rather complain than act" and that such people are "on your knees" rather "than on your feet"; That the last three decades of law have held for an absolutist view of the Second Amendment, a claim the courts and legislature who have been passing and upholding more and more restrictive gun control laws over this period might beg to differ with; Refers to the U.S. Civil War as "the War between the States", the euphemism used by modern slavery supporters to refer to this war; That the intent of gun control supporters is to disarm crime victims; That the intent of the Brady gun-control bill of the early 1990s was to disarm women so more of them could be raped; That gun control laws are passed to disenfranchise specific minorities; That the news media is "slavishly devoted to socialism", when with the exceptions of the editorial page of the New York Times and some small independent publications the American media is if anything slanted somewhat conservative; That the United Nations wants to eliminate the rights of American citizens enumerated in the Constitution; That all gun control advocates have mental defects, using the example of a single gun control advocate with clinical depression as proof, and then making further arguments on this point; That gun-control advocates "can't be argued with or made to see the truth" but "They can only be defeated"; and that politics isn't "polite democratic debate".

August 15, 2001: Critics and protesters trying to attend a Bush rally in Rocky Mountain National Park are forced into a confinement zone that the Secret Service calls a "First Amendment area", more than a mile away from the event.

August 16, 2001: Unrelated: Representative Floyd Spence, a Republican from South Carolina and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, dies of an aneurysm at the age of 73.

August 16, 2001: Changes health regulations enacted during the previous administration, among other things eliminating the guarantee of Medicaid recipients with continuing health problems to have the same type of specialized care that they had previously; Eliminating a requirement that insurers annually deliver information on their plans to insurees; And changes the maximum allowed time that health maintenance organizations are allowed to wait before responding to the grievance of a patient with a life threatening condition from 72 hours to 3 business days, meaning that weekends and holidays are not counted in the period.

August 17, 2001: Unrelated: American mercenaries combating drug traffic in Columbia hold a press conference to improve public relations after the popular magazine Semana calls them "Godless Rambos".

August 17, 2001: Promises to help Argentina's floundering economy.

August 17, 2001: The U.S. Justice Department files a motion to intervene in favour of a religious organization which is suing the city of Lake Elsinore, California, to be allowed to build a house of worship on land that is zoned for commercial use.

August 17, 2001: Unrelated: Eight Marines - a Major General, five Colonels, a Lieutenant Colonel, and a Captain - are charged with misconduct by falsifying maintenance and safety records for the experimental MV-22 Osprey aircraft.

August 17, 2001: Director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives John DiIulio, a Democrat, resigns from his position after six months. When he was appointed, DiIulio had said that he only planned to serve for six months.

August 18, 2001: As China holds its largest ever naval training exercise on the far side of Taiwan, the U.S. Navy holds a large training exercise of its own, involving two carrier fleets, off China's southern coast.

August 18, 2001: Unrelated: Afghanistan's de facto government, the Taliban fundamentalist militia, refuses to extend the visas of Western diplomats and tells them to leave the country.

August 20, 2001: Unrelated: The European Union demands $4 billion from the United States for its illegal subsidization of exporters.

August 20, 2001: Unrelated: The Federal Reserve Bank lowers interest rates by a quarter of a percent, to 3.5%.

August 22, 2001: Unrelated: Senator Jesse Helms, R-NC, announces that he will not be seeking re-election in 2002.

August 22, 2001: The General Accounting Office revises its budget estimates. In the new estimate, the previously $125 billion surplus is reduced to under $1 billion, due to $74 billion fewer in revenues due to the tax cut, $40 billion not realized due to an economic downturn, and $11 billion in spending increases. Democrats blame Bush's tax cut for the loss of the surplus even though the bulk of the tax cut will not go into effect for years to come, while Bush claims that $140 billion earmarked for spending on Social Security and paying down the debt will not be spent, therefore calling it a surplus, and uses this fallacial $140 billion figure and public confusion over the implementation of the tax cut to claim that a second tax cut of similar size is necessary and will fit within the surplus.

August 23, 2001: Declares that the United States will unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic missile treaty between the U.S. and Russia.

August 24, 2001: Appoints Air Force General Richard Meyers as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

August 24, 2001: U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham tells the United Nations Security Council that the Unites States will veto any attempt to involve the United Nations in the latest Arab war against Israel.

August 24, 2001: Unrelated: 15 Republican Congressmen visit Israel to voice their support of the nation against the Arab revolt.

August 25, 2001: The U.S. condemns the European Union's decision to require labeling of genetically modified foods, claiming that the labeling requirement is being applied in a discriminatory manner.

August 25, 2001: Announces intention to cut the number of federal government employees. While the Clinton administration cut 325,000 jobs, a report issued by the General Accounting Office says that most of the cuts were poorly planned, and the number of redundant administration positions has increased. Also announces that services offered by the federal government should have private competition.

August 25, 2001: Unrelated: After a six day trial, antigovernment activist Jim Bell is convicted of stalking two IRS employees and sentenced to ten years imprisonment and a fine of $10,000. Bell is the author of the 'Assassination Politics' manifesto, which suggests that those who don't like a political figure should send anonymous donations to an account to be anonymously withdrawn from by the eventual assassin of the figure. While Bell had never been served with a restraining order nor had he been warned not to compile information on the agents, the prosecution claimed that Bell was a threat on their lives. The prosecution's affidavit stated that Bell had proposed implementing Assassination Politics on the agents, although news reports did not mention this and most reports suggested it was both untrue and not mentioned in the trial. However, according to news reports the government's case against Bell largely ignored these issues, instead focusing on how dangerous the Assassination Politics document is and how dangerous Bell is for having written it and not recanting and destroying the essay; on how the agents felt Bell was a threat to their lives because he had owned four guns prior to 1997, along with a bayonet for one of them; how Bell's ability to use Internet search engines was a special skill that made him dangerous to the public; And how Bell's degree in chemistry meant that he intended to replicate the sarin gas attack on Tokyo. Bell had gathered information on the agents through publicly available CD-ROM data archives, search engines, and conversations with other Internet users. During the trial, the judge Jack Tanner threatened journalists with contempt of court for quoting public documents that had been released by the court. Other persons have been harassed or arrested by the police in several countries including the U.S. and Australia for distributing copies of or discussing the Assassination Politics document.

August 27, 2001: Unrelated: Iraq shoots down an unmanned U.S. reconnaissance plane flying over Iraq. After the 1991 war, the U.S. and U.K. claimed control of the airspace over northern and southern Iraq to encourage rebellion in the areas, and continue to patrol the no fly zones after the expected rebellions failed. Iraq has never recognized U.S. and U.K. control of the airspace, and has continually fired upon American and British airplanes flying through it, while the U.S. and U.K. have bombed Iraq's air defense installations which Iraq calls "civilian installations" and claims any killed soldiers to be civilians.

August 27, 2001: The United States fails to appear at the United Nations Conference Against Racism in protest of the conference's central point to declare the existence of Israel racist and illegitimate. The U.S. had previously refused to attend the last two U.N. Conferences Against Racism in 1983 and 1978 for the same reason. Canada's foreign minister soon reports that he will not be attending the conference for the same reason.

August 28, 2001: Unrelated: Police in Florence, Italy defuse a small bomb that was placed outside the United States consulate.

August 28, 2001: Unrelated: Colonel Kizza Besigye of Uganda, who in March lost the presidential election to Yoweri Museveni 69% to 28%, arrives in the United States claiming that his life is threatened by Museveni's administration.

August 28, 2001: Unrelated: Representative Luis Gonzales of Illinois is sentenced to three hours of prison for trespassing on Navy land on Vieques island in Puerto Rico.

August 29, 2001: Unrelated: The Commerce Department reports that economic growth for the preceding quarter is one fifth of a percent, down from 1.3% in the first quarter of the year. A reduction in business inventories and a reduction in exports are blamed for the decline.

August 29, 2001: The U.S. State Department condemns Israel's occupation of Beit Jala, a Palestinian Authority controlled suburb of Jerusalem where the government had permitted militia to fire guns and mortars at a nearby Israeli suburb of Jerusalem. Israel removes its troops within two days, after agreeing to a cease fire with the local authorities.

August 29, 2001: The U.S. State Department sends a team to the U.N. Conference Against Racism to attempt to convince the conference to remove anti-Israel language from conference papers.

August 29, 2001: Expresses concern that an upcoming U.N. conference on children will consider abortion counseling and services.

August 29, 2001: Unrelated: The U.S. Copyright Office issues a report on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law passed unanimously in 1998 that grants new monopolies to copyright holders beyond what they have been given in the past, and has caused limited protests not just in the United States but overseas as the U.S. attempts to enforce this law beyond its own borders. Among the rights granted to copyright holders are the right to control the reading of a copyrighted work, and the full force of law to any restrictions the copyright owner may require with the sale of their work, overriding any conflict between these restrictions and prior law, common law, or judicial precedent including in practice judicial opinions derived from the Constitution. Among the statements in the report are that traditional copyright law should not apply to digital copies of works but a second, stricter set of standards should apply; That the restriction of copyright to the right of first sale, allowing the buyer of a work to transfer his ownership of the work on his own terms, should not apply to digital works; And that although copyright owners have abused their newfound rights to the detriment of consumers and in the future are likely to cause greater harm to consumers, no action should be taken because the harm caused so far is not as great as it will probably be in the future, so immediate action is not needed.

August 30, 2001: Unrelated: The Russian Foreign Ministry warns its information technology workers not to travel to the United States.

August 31, 2001: Unrelated: The bodies of 15 people are discovered buried in a former U.S. army base in Honduras that was built in 1984 and used to train Nicaraguan rebels until being given to the Honduran military and abandoned in 1994.

August 31, 2001: Unrelated: U.S. astronaut Frank Culbertson, in an interview with the BBC, states that from space he has witnessed the Earth's environment get significantly worse in ten years.

August 31, 2001: Unrelated: The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a report stating that 113,000 jobs were lost in the month of August.

August 31, 2001: Unrelated: The NGO Forum, a conference of non-government organizations operating in parallel with the United Nations Conference on Racism, issues a statement which declares the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to be racist and Israel to be a "foreign power" and to be conducting "barbaric" "terrorist acts". While many forms of racism and oppression are mentioned, Israel is the only state singled out as carrying out these acts and is mentioned repeatedly. Zionism, the nationalist belief that Jews should be able to form their own state and self-government that led to the creation of Israel, is as well the only specified form of religious intolerance. The declaration is denounced by the U.S., Israel, Amnesty International, and the head of the U.N. Conference against Racism.

August 31, 2001: Delays the release of records of President Reagan's administration indefinitely. The Presidential Records Act states that these records were to have been released in January.

September 1, 2001: The U.S. issues forbids sale of high technology to a Chinese corporation, China Metallurgical Equipment Corporation, and the National Development Complex of Pakistan after officials claim CME sold missile technology to Pakistan in violation of a yr. 2000 treaty which forbids China to export any missile technology. China claims that it did not sell any missile technology to Pakistan, and argues that in spite of the treaty it should be able to sell missile technology to Pakistan because the U.S. sells missile technology to Taiwan.

September 1, 2001: Unrelated: During the 32nd anniversary of the coup he successfully lead, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi condemns the United States' government as being "antiquated" and belonging "in a museum", and claims that the U.S. developed the AIDS virus.

September 2, 2001: Unrelated: Libya states that it will seize the property of U.S. companies who left when the U.S. declared an embargo on Libya in 1986, unless the U.S. lifts the embargo and let the companies return to claim their property.

September 3, 2001: Announces intention to share missile defense technology with China, and his support for China increasing its stockpile of nuclear missiles.

September 3, 2001: Michael Kozak, U.S. Ambassador to Belarus, admits that the U.S. is attempting to overthrow the government in that country in what he describes as a "Contras policy". In the 1980s, Kozak had been ambassador to Nicaragua where the Contras massacred scores of civilians. During elections a week later, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko defeats challenger Vladimir Goncharik 78% to 12%, despite polls which had shown less than half the population supporting Lukashenko. International voting monitors saw no evidence of corruption, but claimed the totals were suspect. Goncharik claims that he had his own people conduct a second tally which showed Lukashenko winning 46% to 40%.

September 3, 2001: Unrelated: Marijuana advocate Grover Crosslin is killed by an FBI sniper on his property after he saw the sniper aiming at him and raised his own weapon in response. Crosslin had held marijuana-promotion parties on his land, and legal proceedings were under way to seize the land after police purchased marijuana from a partygoer. Antigovernment activists immediately denounce the killing as reminiscent of the Waco siege that ended in the deaths of over 80 members of a Christian sect. Crosslin's roommate is shot dead under similar circumstances the next day.

September 5, 2001: Unrelated: Senator Phil Gramm, R-TX, announces that he will not be seeking re-election in 2002.

September 5, 2001: President Vicente Fox of Mexico asks Bush to ease the process of immigration from Mexico to the U.S.

September 5, 2001: Unrelated: NASA conducts a successful test of a scramjet engine.

September, 2001: A judge declares that a plan of Bush's to give seniors drug discount cards exceeds the authority granted to the President by the Constitution.

September 6, 2001: The Department of Justice reports that it will not attempt to break up Microsoft, in order to speed up the case, and will instead seek a conduct agreement. Microsoft had broken two conduct agreements with the government after previous trials, and its executives had lied under oath and presented falsified evidence during the latest trial. Public opinion is heavily against the trial, with over 60% of the public considering the trial to be an abuse of the government's power to control trade. During the election campaign, Microsoft had hired one of Bush's top advisers to present a favourable view of themselves to the soon to be President.

September 6, 2001: Former Senator John Danforth is appointed envoy to Sudan.

September 6, 2001: Unrelated: The U.S. Embassy in Japan warns that American soldiers in that country are likely to be targets of terrorist attacks.

September, 2001: Unrelated: Christians in U.S. ally Saudi Arabia ask the United States to intervene against the arrests of over a dozen Christian leaders in the country, where Islam is the only legal religion to practice.

September 6, 2001: Unrelated: Thirteen Miami policemen are charged with covering up evidence and planting false evidence after the shooting of three men. Two suspects who have already retired from the force plead guilty.

September 6, 2001: The New York Times reports that it has discovered confidential government documents showing Bush's intent to reduce nursing home inspections and penalties for poor care.

September 7, 2001: Unrelated: The CIA reports that Iran is attempting to acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons along with missiles to deliver them. Iran denies the claims.

September 7, 2001: Unrelated: The United Nations declares that Serbia's crackdown on the renegade province of Kosovo did not constitute genocide, although war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed. Former U.S. President Clinton had used the threat of Serbian genocide against Kosovans of Albanian descent as an excuse to conduct a months-long bombing campaign which destroyed much of Serbia's economic infrastructure and happened to break the streak of no two countries with McDonald's fast food restaurants attacking each other.

September 7, 2001: Unrelated: President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, calls for the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance to be replaced by a wider-breadth treaty which would have American nations cooperate against poverty and crime.

September 7, 2001: Medellin drug cartel leader Fabio Ochoa is extradited to the U.S. from Columbia. Ochoa had surrendered himself to Columbia for the promise of not being extradited to the United States.

September 7, 2001: The General Accounting Office announces that it is considering court action against Bush for refusing to answer to the GAO's request to know who attended the Energy Task Force meetings with Vice President Cheney. White House officials state that claims of a secret energy council are nothing more than partisan nonsense.

September 8, 2001: South Korea asks North Korea to resume negotiations with the United States that had begun under the Clinton administration but had been suspended by Bush.

September 8, 2001: Unrelated: The Arab League, a coalition of 22 Arab nations, asks the United States to intervene in the Palestinian Authority's war against Israel in order to prevent Israel from assassinating Palestinian Arab military leaders who had been engaged in planning and carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians, calling Israel's assassinations policy "extreme oppression and violence against the Palestinian people". About 60 Palestinian Arab leaders and many innocent bystanders have been killed by such Israeli attacks.

September 8, 2001: Unrelated: During ceremonies to commemorate the ending of World War 2, Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka offers an apology to American prisoners of war who had been mistreated. Chinese protestors demand an apology for Japanese violations of human rights during the China campaign and monetary compensation for victims. Under the terms of the San Francisco peace treaty that formally ended the second World War, Japan is not required to pay any compensation to any of its victims. It is not mentioned in news reports whether China is a party to this treaty.

September 9, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announces plans to cut the military's bureaucracy and reduce the number of bases.

September 9, 2001: Unrelated: The University of Pennsylvania issues a report claiming that 400,000 children in the U.S. have been sexually abused.

September 10, 2001: Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew meets with U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evands to appeal for the lifting of the U.S.'s 19.3% tariff on Canadian lumber.

September 11, 2001: Unrelated: Both main towers of the World Trade Center in New York are destroyed and the Pentagon is damaged from ramming by multiple hijacked civilian jetliners, killing thousands. It is not immediately apparent who had planned the attack, but terrorist organizations worldwide rush to deny responsibility and several of the world's most preeminent terrorists, including Gadhafi and Yasser Arafat, condemn it. Groups claiming responsibility are the Japanese Red Army and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The DFLP quickly retracts their statement, and neither organization is considered a major suspect.

September 11, 2001: Bush pledges to eliminate all terrorism worldwide. He reiterates this pledge several times in the coming days.

September 12, 2001: Unrelated: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance consisting of the U.S., Canada, and most of Europe, declares that all member nations will offer full support, including military, to the U.S.'s response. Similar statements of support are given by the Rio Group, a coalition of 19 Central and Southern American nations, and Russia. Russia later clarifies their position by saying that they would not offer any assistance in a possible invasion of Afghanistan. Due to the confused and hasty atmosphere in the media, the initial reports of Russia offering military support may have been in error.

September 12, 2001: Unrelated: The U.S. media declares that Osama bin Laden is the mastermind behind the recent terrorist attacks. No evidence is given to support this claim other than that he is being considered a primary suspect by investigators, who also appear to have no evidence linking the attack to bin Laden other than the circumstance of bin Laden leading one of very few terrorist organizations with the funds and manpower to carry out such an attack. Afghanistan, where bin Laden is a respected philanthropist and civil engineer who according to a Pakistani journalist was recently appointed commander in chief of all ground forces, states its refusal to believe that bin Laden has a terrorist network or could be behind such attacks, and claims that the nature of the attack proves bin Laden's innocence because he does not have any pilots under his official command.

September 12, 2001: Unrelated: Russia claims that its planes did not harass an American P-3 over the Pacific Ocean, after U.S. papers report that a Russian interceptor flew within 50 feet of the P-3 and whose pilot radioed that he was targeting the American aircraft.

September 2001: Unrelated: The Senate passes a law allowing federal agencies to search private computer networks without permission or a warrant.

September 2001: China is permitted entry into the World Trade Organization.

September 2001: Unrelated: The Taliban threatens to go to war with any country that assists the U.S. in invading Afghanistan.

September 13, 2001: Pakistan, chief supporter of the Taliban and behind numerous terror attacks against India but also U.S. cold war ally, agrees to let the United States use its land and airspace for staging any possible attacks against Afghanistan where bin Laden is headquartered. Riots break out in the coming days and four people are killed, including a businessman who opened his store after religious leaders called for a nationwide strike.

September 13, 2001: The World Wrestling Federation reports that Bush personally contacted them to urge them to continue their shows. This organization is highly disreputable, and the validity of the claim should be considered as suspect by the reader.

September 2001: Unrelated: Highly influential Christian preacher Jerry Falwell and former Presidential candidate Pat Robertson claim that the recent terrorist attack was caused by the American Civil Liberties Union and by those who would separate government from enforcement of religion, allow gays and lesbians to exist, and stand against government regulations preventing abortion. Other conservative leaders claim that citizens leaning left-of-center politically are a "fifth column" in the fight against terrorists, a reference to rebel sympathizers in Madrid who cooperated with and assisted four columns of invading rebel troops(Andrew Sullivan, Times of London); That all Muslim and Arab-looking people should be considered terrorists and all non-citizens should be expelled(Ann Coulter); That anybody who opposes "erasing" entire countries and killing all the civilians within is wrong-thinking and undermining the U.S.'s efforts and such "liberal" thought is akin to a policy of appeasement(Rich Lowry); That the US should evict the United Nations from New York for being slow to issue an official statement and vote condemning the attacks(Andrea Peyser, New York Post); That Bill Clinton's having had an affair with a person not his wife is the cause of the attack(New York Post editorial board); and that anybody who isn't in full support of war is anti-American and that it is anti-American for a preacher to warn Americans not to commit acts of vengeance against random Arab-looking people(Mark Steyn). Coulter is later fired for further columns literally calling for genocide against Muslims, and other conservative leaders including Rush Limbaugh condemn some of these statements, although Limbaugh himself begins calling Democrats by Middle Eastern nicknames to imply that the Democratic party is in league with and supporting the terrorists.

September 14, 2001: Unrelated: A group of Chinese journalists is expelled from the United States for having cheered and applauded news of the recent terrorist attack.

September 14, 2001: Unrelated: The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, reports that high ranking members of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad warned the CIA in August of a joint Iraqi/bin Laden terrorist force in the U.S. numbering 200 men that was planning a large attack of some kind in September. It is also reported that the CIA has a policy of ignoring information it gets from Mossad, despite Mossad being having some of the best intelligence information on Middle East activities. The CIA denies the report. Jason Keyser of the Associated Press reports contacting an unnamed high ranking Mossad official who has confirms the original report. Israel's head of military intelligence, Amos Malka, later says that there is no direct link to Iraq.

September, 2001: Unrelated: CIA Director George Tenet releases a memo, titled "We're At War", ordering an immediate end to bureaucratic competition and separation of work that has hampered the CIA's ability to do its job.

September 15, 2001: Vice President Cheney mentions the Egypt-based group Islamic Jihad as a possible military target.

September 15, 2001: Unrelated: Osama bin Laden issues a statement denying all involvement in the terrorist attack September 11.

September 15, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld warns legislators not to turn the US into a police state.

September 16, 2001: Unrelated: Liberia orders the arrest of anyone found trading pictures of bin Laden, the leading suspect in the recent attack on the United States.

September 16, 2001: Unrelated: India urges the United States to take measures to protect Indian citizens living in the US from revenge attacks by Americans, after a Sikh is shot dead in Arizona.

September 16, 2001: Unrelated: Tehran Mayor Morteza Alviri sends a message of condolence to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the recent attack which destroyed the World Trade Center. This is notable as it is the first official contact between Iran and the United States since Iran revolted against the U.S. backed dictator in 1979.

September 20, 2001: The Department of Defense suspends all discharges of servicemen.

September 22, 2001: Unrelated: The Taliban announces that it has lost track of the location of Osama bin Laden, despite earlier claiming to have had him under house arrest.

September 22, 2001: Waives sanctions against India and Pakistan that were placed when the two countries detonated nuclear weapons in 1998. Other sanctions on Pakistan related to the 1999 coup are left in place.

September 2001: The Taliban shoots down an unmanned reconnaissance drone over Afghanistan. The US claims that it has lost such a drone over Afghanistan, but not the one the Taliban shot down.

September 2001: White House officials condemn NBC Nightly News for interviewing former President Bill Clinton. As a result, NBC Nightly News schedules an interview with former President George H.W. Bush, the President's father.

September 2001: Planned military operations against Afghanistan are renamed Operation Ensuring Freedom, after the previous name, Operation Infinite Justice, was found offensive to Muslims who believed that only God could carry out infinite justice. Also, Bush apologizes for calling the planned war a "crusade", which cemented previously wavering opposition to the United States in the Middle East by recalling memories of the racist wars by the same name.

September 2001: White House officials announce that, contrary to prior statements, the President's airplane was not a target of the terrorists. Earlier they had announced that a threatening phone call had been received which made use of secret code words to refer to the plane, as an excuse for rapidly transporting the President to random locations throughout the country before returning him to the White House after the attacks.

September 2001: Attorney General John Ashcroft proposes the Anti Terrorism Act which would greatly enhance the powers of law enforcement - for electronic media, beyond what the Constitution allows for conventional media - and reduce law enforcement's accountability to the public. Opposition rises from both liberals and conservatives, and Republican representative Bob Barr notes that many of the powers in the bill had been requested before and denied by Congress and accuses the Ashcroft of taking advantage of the terrorist attack to acquire these powers during a time of great nationalism.

September 2001: Public polls show Bush's approval rating at 90%, the highest ever recorded for a sitting President. Before the attacks, Bush's approval rating was 51%, including a 39% disapproval rating which has since dropped to 6%. Bush Sr. during the Gulf War, and Truman after the surrender of Germany, had both polled at 87% approval.

September 25, 2001: After political comedian Bill Maher challenges Bush's repeated statements that the terrorist attack was "a cowardly act" by stating that Clinton's war tactic of "lobbing cruise missiles from 2000 miles away" was cowardly while "Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly", White House press secretary Ari Fleischer condemns Maher, saying that Americans "need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is". Maher's television show is subsequently dropped by several stations, and many advertisers pull their funding. The official White House transcript of Fleischer's remarks omits the words "watch what they say", which is explained as a transcription error.

September 25, 2001: Unrelated: The City of New York bans amateur photographers from taking pictures of the ruins of the World Trade Center.

September 27, 2001: Department of Defense officials admit that special operations forces are in Afghanistan, operating in small groups of three to five soldiers.

September 27, 2001: Unrelated: The State of Georgia indicts David McOwen on one count of computer theft and seven counts of computer trespass, punishible by up to 120 years of jail and $815,000 in fines, for having installed a harmless distributed computing research program on computers he administered at a Georgia college. Georgia's office of Attorney General is directly prosecuting the case, rather than it being handled by a common prosecutor. McOwen pleads guilty in January after being driven into debt, and is penalized a $2,100 fine and 80 hours of community service.

September 28, 2001: Al-Jazeera, one of the more respected television news organizations in the Middle East, reports that three U.S. soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan and their two guides have been captured by the Taleban and that multiple sources within the Taliban and bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization have confirmed this. A Department of Defense spokesman refuses to comment, saying "We are not going to get into the habit of commenting on every story that comes out of the region." The Taliban denies the story, claiming that "it is difficult to believe" that foreign troops could enter Afghanistan while the Taliban is in control, despite a firefight six days earlier between the Taliban and British SAS near Kabul.

September 28, 2001: Unrelated: BBC journalist Yvonne Ridley is arrested by the Taleban for entering the country without a passport. She is released 10 days later on Taleban dictator Muhammad Omar's personal order.

September 29, 2001: Unrelated: Sources within the CIA admit that the organization has been trying to assassinate Osama bin Laden since 1998, despite a Presidential ban on assassinations, implemented by Gerald Ford, being in place during this time. It is later revealed that Clinton had secretly authorized the assassination plan and had allowed for as much as the shooting down of a civilian airliner if bin Laden happened to be on board.

September 30, 2001: British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the United States has shown him "incontrovertible" evidence linking the September 11 terrorist attack to bin Laden.

September 30, 2001: Unrelated: The Congressional Black Caucus holds a dinner to honor Clinton, and many of the attendees refer to him as "the first Black President". During the event, an AIDS activist accuses Clinton of murder for not finding a cure for AIDS during his term as President, and Secret Service agents attempt to confiscate reporters' recording equipment during the disruption.

October 1, 2001: Unrelated: Former President Clinton is disbarred from practicing law before the Supreme Court.

October 2, 2001: Unrelated: New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is awarded Italy's highest civilian honor, ordination in the Knights of the Great Cross, for spreading hope and idealism following the terrorist attack. In light of the circumstances, nobody cares that the U.S. Constitution forbids anyone in government from accepting a title of nobility without Congress's consent, which it is not reported that Congress ever gave.

October 3, 2001: Announces plans for a $60-75 billion economic stimulus package, most of which is to consist of further tax cuts for larger business and upper-class incomes. This is in addition to $40 billion in new military spending and $15 billion in aid to air travel companies that Congress has passed.

October, 2001: States that the creation of an independent state for Palestinian Arabs who had been refused inclusion in nearby states, as long as the resulting state recognizes Israel's right to exist, has always been part of the United States' Middle East policy. It had not been until the Clinton administration. Israel takes offense and demands that Palestinian Arab terrorist groups Islamic Resistance(HAMAS), Islamic Jihad, and Hizb Allah be added to Bush's list of terrorist organizations whose assets should be frozen immediately. The US's Muslim and Arab ally states in the Middle East and Asia have threatened to evict the U.S. military presence there and support bin Laden if Bush were to begin targeting anti-Israel terrorist groups in what Bush has described as a war on all terrorism worldwide.

October 3, 2001: Pakistan states that the evidence is sufficient that bin Laden was behind the terrorist attack in the US the month before.

October 3, 2001: Unrelated: Hizb Allah and Islamic Jihad declare that the United States is a sponsor of terrorism for its support of Israel.

October 3, 2001: Asks Qatar to begin censoring the independent Al-Jazeera television station. The station relies significantly on money from the Emir of Qatar.

October 4, 2001: Unrelated: Congressman J. C. Watts writes a complaint letter to Reuters regarding the news organization's decision to not use the word "terrorist" because it could offend readers who support terrorists' causes.

October 4, 2001: Israel and the US continue to trade diplomatic barbs, with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon claiming that the US is abandoning Israel as Europe abandoned Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1938, and the U.S. saying that Sharon's remarks are "unacceptable".

October 4, 2001: Unrelated: Japan's Cabinet proposes changing the law in order to allow its self defense forces to go overseas to support the U.S.

October 4, 2001: Unrelated: Scientists report that over 100 new glaciers have formed in the Rocky Mountains over the summer, which goes against a worldwide trend of glaciers disappearing.

October 4, 2001: Unrelated: The State of Georgia's Supreme Court declares that use of the electric chair violates the state Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

October 4, 2001: 1000 troops are deployed to Uzbekistan. President Islam Karimov forbids the U.S. from launching ground or air attacks from Uzbek territory.

October 5, 2001: Unrelated: Former Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield dies of heart failure at the age of 98.

October 5, 2001: The U.S. states that the Sandinista party in Nicaragua has links to terrorist organizations, a claim that Sandinista presidential candidate Daniel Ortega denies. Ortega had led the Sandinistas in overthrowing a military dictatorship and setting up a somewhat more liberal dictatorship in its place until free elections were allowed in 1990 and the Sandinistas were voted out. In the 1980s, the United States had trained, armed, and financed the terrorist Contra organization's war against the Sandinistas and civilians who supported them, even after the US Congress forbid President Reagan to continue any further support. Ortega loses the election after the US funds and supports the opposing candidate and threatens trade sanctions should Ortega be elected.

October 5, 2001: Afghanistan offers to release the Shelter Now workers accused of being Christian missionaries if the US will forego airstrikes. A news report states that these workers were caught with "thousands" of Bibles, while the workers have claimed their Christian paraphernalia was for personal use.

October 5, 2001: The Tampa Tribune reports that a secret flight evacuated Saudi royal family members from the United States with Bush's personal approval days after the terrorist attack, while the Federal Aviation Administration denies that such a flight took place.

October 6, 2001: US officials claim that Iranian government officials privately support the US against Afghanistan while publicly condemning the United States to placate the Iranian people and rightists in government. Since revolting against a U.S. led dictatorship in 1979, Iran has claimed that the United States is Satan incarnate on Earth.

October 6, 2001: Unrelated: Debka File, a news source of low repute but which has scooped stories in the past, reports that China has deployed between 5000 and 15000 troops to Afghanistan to fight the United States.

October 2001: Unrelated: 10,000 rally in Pakistan demanding war against the United States.

October 2001: Unrelated: Gore supporters claim that nationalistic fervor is causing newspapers to hide a story about Gore having won the Presidential election in Florida by 20,000 votes, although there is nothing to back up the claim. During the election, major newspapers did cover up stories about Bush having deserted the National Guard and having lied throughout the campaign period over whether or not he had been caught driving drunk, for fear of up being accused of influencing the outcome of the election. Gene Lyons of the Arkansas Gazette later reports that newspapers are indeed covering up the result of a count of 180,000 uncounted Florida ballots that was to be released September 17, because releasing the results might "stoke partisan tensions" and the election "now seems utterly irrelevant" according to New York Times reporter Richard Berke. The Sydney Morning Herald confirms the story.

October 5, 2001: Unrelated: The US launches a spy satellite with a 4-inch resolution.

October 5, 2001: Unrelated: A Florida employee of the American Media tabloid agency dies of anthrax. Days later, a coworker of his is diagnosed with anthrax.

October 5, 2001: Restricts release of classified information to Congress to 8 people, what newspapers describe as unprecedented, after it is leaked that intelligence officials expect a 100% chance of a terrorist attack occurring in retaliation for the bombing of Afghanistan.

October 6, 2001: Unrelated: Two Americans and two Britons are killed by a bomb in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

October 7, 2001: Begins daily airstrikes on Afghanistan, with UK assistance. Claims the "collective will of the world" is supporting war against Afghanistan by the US and declares that no country will be considered neutral. Canada, Australia, Germany, and France pledge military support. The Taliban calls the airstrikes a terrorist act and claims that all strikes targeted civilian facilities. 37,000 food rations are also dropped in remote regions of Afghanistan. 4,000 riot in Quetta, Pakistan. Pakistani dictator Musharraf fires several high ranking members of his military and intelligence services who lean towards supporting the Taliban. Taliban officials claim 20 civilians are killed by the attack on Kabul, while independent checks of regional hospitals show no casualties. Four United Nations personnel are killed when their offices in Kabul are bombed.

October 7, 2001: Unrelated: A United Nations helicopter is shot down over Abkhazia, a province of the former Soviet republic of Georgia which successfully rebelled in 1993. Five UN personnel, their translator, and three crewmen are killed.

October 7, 2001: Unrelated: Syria is elected to the 15-member United Nations Security Council with unanimous support from Asian and Middle East countries, despite its support for terrorist groups. Also elected are Guinea, Cameroon, and Bulgaria.

October 8, 2001: Unrelated: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission orders four energy companies to refund California for illegal collusion and price gouging. During the autumn energy crisis, energy prices in California were four to twenty times the price in any other state, a circumstance that the energy companies claimed was caused by simple supply and demand.

October 8, 2001: The humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres condemns the United States' dropping of food rations on Afghanistan as a "military propaganda" tactic to satiate world opinion that might otherwise be opposed to the bombing.

October 8, 2001: The Northern Alliance, the force opposing the Taliban in Afghanistan, reports that 40 Taliban officers have defected to them.

October 8, 2001: The Arab League threatens "severe complications" should the United States extend its "war on terrorism" to other Muslim or any Arab countries.

October 9, 2001: Pakistan offers the United States the use of two airports to base military operations from.

October 9, 2001: After a French journalist disguised as a woman is captured by the Taliban, Taliban Intelligence Chief Mullah Taj Meer states that any foreign journalist "will be treated like an American soldier". The journalist, Michel Peyard, is released on November 3.

October 9, 2001: Unrelated: 17 Americans vacationing near Belize are killed when their boat sinks in a hurricane.

October 9, 2001: Unrelated: A US Army helicopter crashes in Poland, killing the pilot.

October 9, 2001: Pakistan reports a gun battle between its troops and 30 Taliban soldiers attempting to cross the border. Reports that five Taliban helicopters flew across the border and were captured by Pakistan are denied by the foreign ministry, but other government officials claim the events took place.

October 9, 2001: Andrei Grozin, head of the Central Asia Institute for Commonwealth of Independent States Studies, states that "the Taliban has made it clear that they intend to invade Uzbekistan", whose army "is not capable of resisting any major Taliban attack". He states that such an attack will cause Russia to openly intervene, and claims that Russia is already covertly fighting the Taliban.

October 9, 2001: The Christian Science Monitor reports that "leading Russian military expert" Pavel Felgenhauer claims that "unmarked Russian fighter bombers have been seen hitting Taliban positions in recent days", and that "Russian troops are already in Afghanistan".

October 9, 2001: Former President Clinton gives a speech in support of Bush's bombing campaign.

October 9, 2001: Unrelated: The Drug Enforcement Agency bans all food products derived from hemp, the plant family of which marijuana is a member.

October 10, 2001: 500 rioters attempt to storm Indonesia's Parliament during a protest rally calling for war against the United States.

October 10, 2001: Unrelated: A third person in Florida tests positive for anthrax. All cases have so far worked in the same building.

October 10, 2001: Unrelated: Iraq claims to have shot down an unmanned US reconnaissance drone inside the southern no-fly zone.

October 10, 2001: Unrelated: Israeli and Jordanian intelligence officials announce that they have not been able to find a link between the September attacks and Iraq.

October 10, 2001: Major US television news media agree not to broadcast Osama bin Laden's speeches after White House spokesmen inform them that there could be code words within the speeches that are orders to his operatives within the United States.

October 10, 2001: United Nations officials in Afghanistan are tortured by the Taliban and have their vehicles seized.

October 10, 2001: US military advisors are sent to the Philippines to assist in anti-terrorist operations. The Philippine Constitution forbids foreign troops from direct participation in local military operations.

October 10, 2001: Sheik Yusuf al Qaradawi of Qatar and the Fiqh Council of North America issue a fatwa allowing Muslims to take part in the United States' war against terrorism.

October 2001: The Senate passes an anti-terrorism measure that greatly expands police powers 98-1. Only Russel Feingold votes against the bill.

October 11, 2001: The bombing of Afghanistan is halted for a day to honor the Muslim sabbath.

October 11, 2001: Iraq announces that the United States envoy to the United Nations, John Negroponte, threatened to invade Iraq should it cause any instability in the Persian Gulf region.

October 11, 2001: Unrelated: New York rejects a $10 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal after he suggests the United States should "adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause" to prevent further attacks and condemns Israel for "slaughtering our Palestinian brethren".

October 11, 2001: Unrelated: Czech officials state that Mohammed Atta, presumed to have led the terrorist attack the month earlier, met at least three or four times with Iraqi diplomat Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, who had been under surveillance while suspected of planning an attack on Radio Free Europe's offices in Prague and has since been expelled.

October 11, 2001: Thousands of South Africans march on the United States consulate to protest the airstrikes on Afghanistan.

October 11, 2001: Secretary of State Colin Powell gives a speech to reaffirm the United States' support of Israel.

October 11, 2001: The National Post reports that over 6,000 Pakistanis swore an oath to die fighting the United States.

October 11, 2001: Unrelated: Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov states that no Russian troops or instructors are in Afghanistan.

October 11, 2001: Unrelated: An NBC employee in New York tests positive for anthrax after the network reports receiving a suspicious letter the week before. The anthrax is a different type from the Florida cases. The letter was addressed to newsanchor Tom Brokaw.

October 11, 2001: The FBI releases a warning that terrorist attacks are expected within the next few days. On the FBI's public Web site, the document containing the warning is named "skyfall" by the archiving agent, possibly a reference to the story of Chicken Little who panics after mundane events.

October 2001: The House passes an anti-terrorism measure that greatly expands police powers.

October 2001: Unrelated: Former Presidential candidate Ralph Nader condemns the US bombing of Afghanistan, claiming that it will strengthen the terrorists.

October 12, 2001: Uzbekistan allows the United States to launch attacks from its territory if the security of the country could be guaranteed. 10,000 Taliban troops are reported to have massed at the Uzbek border, while 1,000 American troops are in the country. Three years earlier, an invasion force of 140 Taliban troops infiltrated to within 50 miles of the Uzbek capital.

October 12, 2001: Representative Lloyd Dogget condemns the dogmatic belief that tax cuts are the cure to all ills as an $86 billion tax cut package passes through committee. His over the top rhetoric, in asking if there was a tax cut for Osama bin Laden to turn himself in, is criticized by rightists on the committee even though the tax cut package was presented as a solution to the war.

October 12, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft distributes a memo to federal agencies urging them to reject Freedom of Information Act requests, and promising support from the Justice Department in keeping documents from the public.

October 13, 2001: Unrelated: A letter sent to a Microsoft office in Nevada tests positive for anthrax. Other suspicious letters that have been found in various locations around the country test negative. The Microsoft letter tests negative in two later tests, and is accepted to have been a false positive.

October 13, 2001: 20,000 march in London and 15,000 in Berlin to protest the bombing of Afghanistan.

October 13, 2001: Unrelated: Five additional employees of American Media test positive for anthrax.

October 13, 2001: Several thousand Pakistani demonstrators attempt to enter Shabaz airbase outside Jacobobad, where US troops are said to be stations.

October 13, 2001: Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz urges the United States to stop bombing Afghanistan.

October 13, 2001: Unrelated: The Washington Post reports that the United States and Uzbekistan have had a secret military alliance against the Taliban and bin Laden since the 1998 embassy bombings.

October 13, 2001: Hundreds of Christians are massacred in Kano, Nigeria, after demonstrations against the US bombing.

October 13, 2001: Unrelated: Osama bin Laden states that terrorist attacks will not cease until the world meets his demands, which are the removal of all non-Arabs from the Saudi peninsula, the removal of sanctions against Iraq, and the ending of all international relations with India and Israel so his armies will be free to conduct a war of extermination against Hindus and Jews.

October 14, 2001: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami condemns both the Taliban and the United States for stating that anybody who does not join them is their enemy.

October 14, 2001: Unrelated: India shells 11 Pakistani border posts in retaliation for sabotage of a power station.

October 14, 2001: Unrelated: A letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle tests positive for anthrax. CNN later reports that the type of anthrax is a high grade difficult to produce, although further reports clarify that it is not considered weapon grade, and that writing on the envelope is similar to writing on the envelope from the NBC New York attack where the type of anthrax used was of a lower grade.

October 14, 2001: The United Nations condemns the United States' policy of dropping food packets in Afghanistan over wide areas because combining food aid with bombing may cause aid organizations to be considered hostile forces in the future, because some of the food could be seized by the Taliban instead of civilians, and because some could have landed in minefields where civilians could be hurt trying to get to them.

October 14, 2001: Rejects the Taliban's offer of a ceasefire in exchange for the promise to release bin Laden to a neutral country if "sufficient evidence of his guilt" is given. The Taliban has declared evidence of bin Laden's guilt in previous attacks, including bin Laden's own taking credit for the attacks, as being insufficient.

October 14, 2001: Unrelated: A visitor to ABC's news studio in New York tests positive for anthrax.

October 14, 2001: Unrelated: Queen Elizabeth of England ordains New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as a Knight Commander in the Order of the British Empire. As before, it is not reported whether Congress made a decision to allow the honor.

October 14, 2001: The Red Cross warehouse compound in Kabul, Afghanistan is hit by a US bomb.

October 2001: The Department of Defense purchases exclusive rights to all civilian satellite images of Afghanistan with the clear intent of barring the images from reaching the public.

October 2001: Unrelated: The Army of God, a US-based terrorist group, mails envelopes containing death threats and an unidentified powder to scores of health clinics that provide abortion services.

October 15, 2001: Unrelated: The House of Representatives votes 404-0 to voice its support for government schools imposing religious messages on children.

October 2001: White House officials claim that the United States destroyed all of its anthrax supplies after the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

October 16, 2001: Unrelated: The US Capitol is closed after 31 Senate employees test positive for anthrax.

October 16, 2001: Unrelated: The City Council of Berkeley, California passes a resolution urging the United States to end "the cycle of violence", by using these words implying that the United States bears significant responsibility for terrorist attacks upon it and that the attacks would stop if the United States had not bombed Afghanistan. Businesses nationwide begin canceling their contracts with businesses based in Berkeley.

October 16, 2001: Lawyer Thomas Willcox claims to have this day overheard Antitrust Department head and Assistant Attorney General Charles James complaining that Clinton's Antitrust Department head Joel Klein and Federal Trade Commission head Robert Pitofsky had prosecuted and won cases against lawbreaking corporations, and that it would take "years to undo the damage". James denies that he ever said or believes such things.

October, 2001: Australia commits 1,500 troops and four aircraft to assist the United States.

October 2001: Unrelated: Three Louisiana teenagers are charged with terrorism for shooting water guns at elderly bingo hall patrons.

October 17, 2001: Unrelated: United Nations officials claim that the Taliban has seized warehouses containing more than half of the food aid it had sent to Afghanistan.

October 17, 2001: Unrelated: Dan Goldin, chief administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, announces his retirement.

October 17, 2001: Unrelated: The United States and British embassies in Bosnia are temporarily closed due to security threats.

October 17, 2001: Unrelated: New York Governor George Pataki reports that anthrax spores have been discovered in his office.

October 17, 2001: Unrelated: A businessman in Nairobi, Kenya, receives a letter from Atlanta that tests positive for anthrax. Other anthrax-containing letters are sent to high ranking United Nations Environmental Program officials. One of the letters was postmarked from Atlanta via Miami on September 8, three days before the terrorist attack, while another was sent from Pakistan.

October 17, 2001: Unrelated: A CBS News employee in New York tests positive for anthrax.

October 17, 2001: Canada commits 900 troops to assist the US attack.

October 18, 2001: Unrelated: The Navy bans offensive graffiti after a photograph of a bomb with "High Jack This Fags" scrawled across it is publicized.

October 18, 2001: Unrelated: Japan passes a law allowing its troops to be sent overseas to assist US attacks or for humanitarian missions.

October 18, 2001: Unrelated: A New Jersey postal worker tests positive for anthrax.

October 18, 2001: Travels to China, where the Chinese President speaks in support of the war.

October 19, 2001: Unrelated: A New York Post employee tests positive for anthrax.

October 19, 2001: Unrelated: A suitcase containing C4 explosives and fuse is found in a Philadelphia bus terminal. The 150 grams of explosive are said to be enough to demolish the building where it was found.

October 19, 2001: Between 100 and 200 US troops land in Afghanistan and engage Taliban forces. The Taliban claims to have killed 20 to 25 US soldiers in the fighting, and to have shot down a helicopter that went down over Pakistan, killing two soldiers. The US claims to have met only light resistance.

October 19, 2001: The Greens/Green Party USA releases a press release condemning the US bombing of Afghanistan as an act of terrorism and urging that the US's leaders "be brought to justice under international law".

October 20, 2001: Unrelated: Anthrax is found in the office building used by House of Representatives workers. A DC postal worker also tests positive for anthrax.

October 20, 2001: Unrelated: 20,000 rally in Sana, Yemen, to protest against the United States.

October 20, 2001: Unrelated: Iraq claims that the United States' own government is behind the recent anthrax attacks, and also states that economic sanctions are a form of terrorism.

October 21, 2001: The Taliban reports that it has executed five men for spying for the US. Later reports state that they were Northern Alliance commanders.

October 21, 2001: The House of Representatives, after conferring with Bush, adjourns for five days.

October 21, 2001: Unrelated: A Communist militia bombs a Coca-Cola plant in India.

October 21-22, 2001: Unrelated: Two DC postal workers die of anthrax.

October 2001: Unrelated: Senator Hillary Clinton of New York is heckled offstage by New York firefighters and police officers during a major charity event for these same public servants.

October 22, 2001: Israel rejects the United States' demands that it withdraw from Palestinian Authority controlled cities. Israel occupied the territories in response to the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavanm Zeevi, a prominent right-wing racist. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has compared the assassination to the attack on the US which destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon in September.

October 22, 2001: The Taliban claims that US bombing hit a hospital, killing 100. The United States denies this. The United Nations confirms the claim.

October 22, 2001: US helicopters come under fire while attempting to retrieve the wreckage of the helicopter that the Taliban claimed to have shot down days earlier, reportedly in Pakistan.

October 22, 2001: Unrelated: A Texas man is executed for a murder he committed at the age of 17, while still a minor.

October 23, 2001: Under international pressure, the United States admits that bombs can miss their targets.

October 23. 2001: Unrelated: Press Secretary Ari Fleischer states that anthrax was found in a post center that processes mail for the White House.

October 23, 2001: Unrelated: Senator Charles Schumer of New York asks the Department of Health and Human Services to allow the government to ignore Bayer Corporation's patent for Ciprofloxacin, the drug of choice for treating anthrax.

October 24, 2001: Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi demands that the world agree on a just and proper definition of terrorism before acting to combat it. He also suggests that the United States bomb London for the United Kingdom's policy of giving political asylum to terrorist suspects, and states that he considers the United States' war against the Taliban to be just if the US is convinced that bin Laden was behind the attack of September 11. Gadhafi also states that he considers "the threat of fleets, sanctions, embargoes" to be terrorism.

October 2001: Unrelated: It is reported that the anthrax which was delivered to Senator Daschle's office had been treated with a chemical which is only produced within Russia, Iraq, and the United States.

October 26, 2001: Bush signs into law an act which greatly enhances police powers. Reports state the effects of the provisions as follows: The requirement for police to obtain a warrant is reduced from "probable cause" to "significant purpose". Warrants can be issued without ever informing the target of the warrant. Police no longer require a warrant to conduct eavesdropping of private correspondance, and can hold suspects accused of "terrorism" ( which is broadly defined) indefinitely and without charges. For electronic searches requiring a warrant, the police no longer need to obtain a warrant from a judge in the same district as the place of the search but may obtain a warrant from any judge in the United States, a warrant for an electronic search now allows the police to expand their search to any electronic target regardless of whether the expanded search is relevent to the investigation, and the police do not have to report where they served the warrant.

October 26, 2001: 50,000 march in support of bin Laden in Karachi, Pakistan.

October 26, 2001: The US continues to bomb Afghanistan, ceasing the practice of foregoing bombing on the Muslim sabbath.

October 2001: The same Red Cross compound that was hit earlier is again bombed by the United States.

October 2001: Unrelated: Traces on anthrax are found in the CIA's mailroom, and a State Department mail carrier is hospitalized with anthrax.

October 2001: The US warns that the Taliban may seize and poison food donated by the US, UN, and international aid agencies before redistributing it to the people in order to blame the poisoning on the United States.

October 26, 2001: Unrelated: Anthrax is found in a mail center for the Supreme Court.

October 26, 2001: The Taliban executes Abdul Haq and Haji Doran after they enter Afghanistan with US State Department support in an attempt to raise a rebellion against the Taliban. Both were heros of the war against the Soviets but had been exiled from Afghanistan for unreported reasons.

_________________Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you...

October 26, 2001: Unrelated: A US Congressman of Lebanese descent is denied entry on an Air France flight to Saudi Arabia, even after another Congressman vouched for his identity.

October 26, 2001: Japan lifts its sanctions on India and Pakistan.

October 26, 2001: Unrelated: A passenger jet is escorted to Canada after its hijacking beacon activates accidentally.

October 26, 2001: Lockheed Martin's X-25 wins the competition to become the Joint Strike Fighter, of which 3,000 airplanes will be produced to replace the F-16 and A-10.

October 27, 2001: Northern Alliance leader Abdullah Abdullah criticizes the United States' bombings as not being as effective as they could, and suggests that there should be greater coordination between the US and his ground forces.

October 27, 2001: Pakistani border guards face off against a militia of Taliban supporters numbering over five thousand to prevent them from entering Afghanistan. The militia soon swells to 10,000, but the Taliban refuses their assistance because there is no ground war and they would be of little help. Weeks later, it is reported that 11,300 Pakistanis entered Afghanistan to fight against the Northern Alliance in Mazar e-Sharif and Kunduz.

October 27, 2001: Seven are killed in India when police fire upon Muslims distributing anti-American pamphlets.

October 27, 2001: The United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees states his worry that refugee camps along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan will become recruiting camps for the Taliban. Pakistan has closed its borders to refugees, partly at the request of the US.

October 27, 2001: Top CIA and FBI officials confide to the media that they believe the anthrax attacks are being conducted by Americans.

October 28, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft releases a vague warning that a serious terrorist attack is imminent and expected within days, likely within 72 hours.

October 2001: Rebels supporting bin Laden mine and blockade Pakistan's main highway and seize control of a town in northern Pakistan. It takes Pakistan's army six days to regain control.

October 2001: Unrelated: A woman with no connection to any sources of anthrax dies of the disease.

October 2001: Unrelated: Anthrax is found in a mailbag of a US embassy in Lithuania, and at the US embassy in Peru.

October 2001: Unrelated: Polls of unreported bias and accuracy claim that 48% of Pakistanis and more than half of all Egyptians blame the September 11 terrorist attacks on the Jews.

October 2001: Unrelated: Representative Ernest Istook proposes an amendment to the Constitution which would allow government run schools to force students to pray. Two years earlier, a similar effort gained a 224 to 203 vote majority, but fell short of the two-thirds vote required to amend the Constitution.

October 2001: The House debates Bush's "stimulus" package, which would not only revoke the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax that was implemented in the 1980s in response to profitable corporations finding enough accounting loopholes to pay no taxes, but would refund all amounts paid by this tax throughout its existence.

October 2001: Civil rights groups begin questioning the government over the disappearing of over 1000 people, who have had no access to lawyers and of those who have been released, have not been told what they were charged with or why they were held. Many of those being held are US citizens.

October 2001: Syria announces that it will support the fight against terrorism, but demands that no action be taken against the "resistance" against Jewish civilians in Israel.

October 2001: Unrelated: A high ranking New York Muslim accuses the Jews of carrying out the terrorist attack on September 11 and claims that Jewish doctors in the US routinely poison Muslim patients. He also states that Jews are responsible for the existence of drug use and homosexuality in society.

October 2001: CNN's chairman orders that his news organizations "balance" their reporting, which has lately focused on civilian casualties due to the US bombing.

October 2001: The US claims that they expect the Taliban to demolish an important mosque in Mazar e-Sharif and blame it on the US.

October 2001: Pakistan's top nuclear scientist expresses his belief that the Taliban are the most righteous government and belief system in the world, evidenced by a prophecy in the Koran which states that all of the world's wrong would ally together against the truly righteous.

October 2001: Unrelated: The Daily Jang, Pakistan's largest newspapers, receives a letter which tests positive for anthrax.

October 2001: Unrelated: The State of Texas Governor's Task Force on Homeland Security prints an advertisement showing a military officer in crisp uniform against the backdrop of an American flag. Readers notice that the officer is a Luftwaffe general.

October 31, 2001: The US government settles with Microsoft by creating a consent decree less stringent than the two previous consent decrees that Microsoft had broken to bring the case against them and which does not forbid Microsoft from continuing to violate laws which Microsoft has felt free to violate because the consent decrees have not specifically mentioned these laws, effectively conceding a case which the US had already won and was in the stage of deciding penalties.

October 31, 2001: The Taliban offers a cease fire in exchange for proof of bin Laden's guilt.

October 31, 2001: Lowers the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water to the level Clinton mandated.

October 31, 2001: Raises the tariff on Canadian softwood lumber imports from 19.3% to 31.9%

November 1, 2001: Turkey offers the US the use of a 90 man special forces unit for the US in Afghanistan.

November 1, 2001: Unrelated: Iraq denies the Czech Republic's reports that Iraqi diplomats met with one of the September 11 terrorists.

November 1, 2001: Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri states that she expects Muslim nations to quit supporting the US war on Afghanistan unless the US wins swiftly.

November 1, 2001: Announces that the bombing will not cease during Ramadan. Several Muslim countries had requested such a pause, even though there is a history of Muslim countries attacking during Ramadan. The Northern Alliance supports the US, saying that the Taliban attacks during Ramadan.

November 1, 2001: bin Laden urges Pakistan's population to take up arms and revolt against the "Christian" US and allied Musharraf government.

November 1, 2001: California Governor Gray Davis reports that a terrorist attack on California's bridges is expected within the next ten days, and that three separate federal intelligence agencies have provided him with this information. The FBI states both that he is lying and that it is a breach of security to have released the information. Later it is revealed that the tip was not from a reliable source.

November 1, 2001: Announces that food packets will now be coloured blue rather than the same yellow colour of cluster bombs that the US has also been dropping on Afghanistan. Cluster bomblets have a 5% failure rate, and those that do not explode when dropped can explode when touched.

November 1, 2001: United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan states his desire for the bombing of Afghanistan to quickly end so that humanitarian relief efforts can resume in full force.

November 2001: Accepts a visit from Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo at the White House.

November 2001: Continential Airlines opens a route from Miami to Havana, Cuba. Cuba is under an embargo from the United States, and it is considered illegal by the US for anyone to spend any money there.

November 2001: Recalls US Ambassador Donna Hrinak from Venezuela after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez condemned the bombing of Afghanistan.

November 2001: Unrelated: An Australian girl reports having been raped by US Navy sailors the prior September.

November 2001: Unrelated: An unconfirmed report states that the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health sent a letter to the Sierra Club asking the esteemed environmental group to publicly declare the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front terrorists. Many acts of arson, theft, and violence against property have been conducted by the latter two organizations, which are more accurately belief systems which anybody can claim to represent after committing such acts.

November 2001: Unrelated: New York firefighters riot during a protest against cutbacks in the number of hours worked removing remains from the World Trade Center where hundreds of firefighters lost their lives.

November 2001: Unrelated: Houston radio station KRIV raises money from its listeners to buy a bomb to be dropped on Afghanistan.

November 2, 2001: A US helicopter goes down in Afghanistan. The Department of Defense reports that its crew survived and was evacuated on another helicopter.

November 2, 2001: Signs an executive order allowing Presidents to withhold records from previous administrations indefinitely, whereas there had been a twelve year limit.

November 2, 2001: After what had been heralded in the news as the heaviest attack on Taliban positions yet, Northern Alliance commanders report that fewer than "3 in 30" bombs hit their targets, and that as a whole the bombing has been ineffective.

November 2, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld begins a tour of several Asian countries to raise support for the war.

November 2, 2001: The Taliban claims to have shot down a "B-52 fighter jet", possibly a translation error. The B-52 is a bomber that operates at a higher altitude than most weapons can reach, but Pakistani papers report that the Taliban has shown wreckage.

November 2, 2001: Green Party USA coordinating committee member Nancy Oden is detained by military police at Bangor International Airport after she is told a check of her name determined that she is a suspected terrorist. She is released, but government officials order all airlines to deny her passage on any flight. Her hotel reservations are coincidentally cancelled by an unknown party.

November 2, 2001: Unrelated: A federal court overturns a 50 year sentence for petty theft, declaring that the mandatory sentence under California's "3 Strikes" law constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

November 2, 2001: Unrelated: The Virginia Supreme Court decides 2-1 that burning a cross is a protected form of free speech, throwing out a case against a man who burned a cross in a black man's backyard. The burning of a cross is nationally recognized as a death threat against non-whites and non-Protestants.

November 3, 2001: Unrelated: bin Laden releases a statement that any Muslim who participates in the United Nations is an "infidel" who has "renounced the message of the prophet Muhammad". bin Laden also specifically condemns Australia as an enemy of Islam for sending troops to protect East Timor from massacres that occurred after the island declared independence from Indonesia.

November 3, 2001: The State Department announces that traces of an unknown bacteria were found in a mail bag at the US embassy in Greece. It got in the news, so it's worth mentioning.

November 3, 2001: Unrelated: Pakistan shells India to support rebels caught in a gun battle with Indian troops.

November 3, 2001: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cancels a planned visit with Bush and states that all planned visits to the US have been put on hold indefinitely.

November 4, 2001: The Taliban state that an American captured 10 days ago has died of natural causes. The United States has rejected all claims that any of its people have been captured by the Taliban.

November 4, 2001: The Arab League, meeting in Damascus, states that Osama bin Laden does not represent Muslims, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher states that he believes bin Laden is at war with the world. Also, Secretary General Amir Moussa reiterates that all Arab countries would drop their support of the US if any Arab nation was attacked, and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al Sharaa claims that the United States cannot make any claim to fight terrorism as long as the US supports Israel.

November 4, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld claims that the Taliban has been rendered incapable of governing Afghanistan.

November 4, 2001: Unrelated: The Daily Telegraph reports that China is producing documentaries celebrating the terrorist attack on the US.

November 5, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld claims that bombing accuracy of Taliban positions has "vastly improved" since special forces have been deployed to the ground to direct the bombers.

November 5, 2001: In what is reported as a response to US pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agrees to visit with Bush later this month and Israel withdraws from several Palestinian Authority controlled cities despite ongoing attacks on Israeli civilians.

November 6, 2001: The Taliban claims to have shot down a US helicopter, a claim confirmed by a senior Pakistani police officer. The US and Pakistani governments officially deny the claim.

November 6, 2001: Warns Europe that no nation will be considered neutral by the United States.

November 6, 2001: Unrelated: Anthrax is found in US embassies in Russia and Pakistan.

November 6, 2001: Attorney General John Ashcroft orders the Drug Enforcement Agency to begin prosecuting doctors who prescribe federally restricted drugs to terminally ill patients wishing to die on their own terms, effectively overturning the state of Oregon's assisted suicide law.

November 6, 2001: Guardian reporter Gregory Palast claims Bush ordered US intelligence agencies to cancel all investigations of Osama bin Laden's family and the Saudi royal family immediately upon entering office in January, and that this policy has been reversed since September 11. He also mentions a supposed secret FBI report regarding this named 199I WF213589. The Saudi royal family includes over 5,000 members and some of these have supported bin Laden, while bin Laden's family has disowned him.

November 2001: Unrelated: The FBI demands that California Governor Gray Davis order the removal of police and National Guard protection from California's bridges.

November 2001: A government report suggests giving the CIA director control over three military intelligence agencies and power to control satellites.

November 2001: Pakistan arrests Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the nation's largest Islamic political party, and charges him with sedition after he urges the military to overthrow Musharraf.

November 2001: Germany pledges 3,900 troops to aid the US.

November 2001: Unrelated: It is reported that China is heavily investing in nuclear weapons programs in Iran and Iraq.

November 2001: Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge refuses Congress's requests to appear before the Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury and General Government.

November 2001: Congressional Republicans accuse the Democrats of trying to worsen the recession in order to win seats in Congress and accuse the Democrats of being "partisan" and conducting "class warfare" by debating the wisdom of retroactively repealing taxes on profitable corporations.

November 2001: The Republican Party urges all members to cancel any subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times after the paper runs a Paul Conrad cartoon depicting an elephant, the Republican Party symbol, wearing a Taliban costume and holding a smoking rifle with the caption "The House tax bill".

November 2001: White House spokesman Scott Stanzel claims, wrongly, that "almost every leading economist" supported Bush's tax cut. In reality, 100 of the country's leading economists, including eight Nobel prize winners, had signed a petition opposing it.

November 7, 2001: Unrelated: A defecting Iraqi Lieutenant General claims that Iraq trains terrorists to attack US civilians.

November 7, 2001: Unrelated: Turkish police arrest two people who attempted to sell weapons grade uranium.

November 7, 2001: The House votes 405-2 to reestablish Radio Free Afghanistan.

November 7, 2001: Unrelated: Major League Baseball owners vote to disband two teams. No team has been kicked out of the major leagues since 1899.

November 7. 2001: Unrelated: A federal appeals court overturns the $5 billon fine on Exxon from the Valdez crash and oil spill as excessive.

November 7, 2001: Unrelated: A US judge declares that US-based Yahoo corporation is not bound by French laws and does not have to pay a fine imposed on it by a French judge for not reviewing Internet auctions to ensure no items are sold that are illegal in France, specifically Nazi war trinkets and memorabilia.

November 7, 2001: The Army of God mails over 200 letters claiming to contain anthrax.

November 7, 2001: Unrelated: Former President Clinton gives a speech in which he discusses the long history of terror and massacres in human society, including the US's genocide of native Americans and practice of slavery for which Clinton highlights the US's success in overcoming such practices. Washington Times columnist Joseph Curl claims that Clinton declared the US deserved the terrorist attack for having practiced such things in the past, an allegation repeated by conservative media including Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

November 8, 2001: Al-Barakaat, Somalia's largest corporation, denies the US's allegations that it funds terrorists.

November 8, 2001: Pakistani dictator Musharraf continues to plead that the US stop bombing Afghanistan during Ramadan.

November 8, 2001: Pakistan closes the Taliban's embassy in Karachi.

November 8, 2001: Refuses to meet with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat until Arafat stops attacks on Israeli civilians.

November 8, 2001: Postmaster General states that the US Postal Service requires an extra $5 billion.

November 8, 2001: Reports intent to cut the US nuclear arsenal by up to two thirds. In January, clarifies this by saying that the weapons will not be destroyed, merely disassembled and stored.

November 8, 2001: Japan pledges 3 warships to support the US.

November 8, 2001: Pakistani paper the Frontier Post reports that 45 US Special Forces soldiers have died in numerous ground raids on Afghanistan. Most reports to date have been that there has only been one ground raid, and the US has denied taking any casualties in it. The same report states that the Taliban shot down a large low flying plane that they claimed to be a B-52.

November 8, 2001: States that American children have donated over 1 million dollars. In an earlier speech, he had asked children to each send a dollar to the White House.

November 8, 2001: States that he is leading efforts to place airport security under federal control. In Congress, Democrats have been advancing this agenda, while Republicans have solidified against it.

November 8, 2001: King Abdullah of Jordan states his support of the US bombing Afghanistan through Ramadan.

November 8, 2001: Pakistani police shoot and kill four rioters during an anti-US riot.

November 8, 2001: Indian Primer Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee calls the US campaign on Afghanistan "poorly prepared", and requests a greater role for India.

November 8, 2001: Saudi officials express anger that Bush has not followed up on a prior promise to create a peace plan between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

November 8, 2001: Germany's Green Party demands restrictions on the use of German troops in the US's war with Afghanistan, and Green Party leader Joschka Fischer threatens to quit the party unless it supports the war.

November 8. 2001: An Indian reporter asks Bush how the US could have the moral authority to go to war against terrorists when it urges India to accept terrorism and not fight back. Bush responds that "terrorism is evil, and all of us must work together to fight evil".

November 8, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft allows federal police to eavesdrop on communications between suspects and their lawyers.

November 8, 2001: Unrelated: The State of Alabama Board of Education votes unanimously to place warning labels on high school biology textbooks warning that the subject matter is controversial and should be questioned.

November 9, 2001: The Northern Alliance seizes the important city of Mazar e-Sharif. The Northern Alliance of executes prisoners of war in Mazar e-Sharif and seizes a UN food convoy.

November 9, 2001: Unrelated: Anthrax is reported to have been found in a British Petroleum facility in Vietnam.

November 9, 2001: Unrelated: Anthrax is found in four New Jersey post offices.

November 9, 2001: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami speaks at Seton Hall university in New Jersey, the first time he has visited US soil other than the United Nations.

November 9, 2001: Cuba refuses the US's offer of aid after a hurricane damages the island nation, but instead requests that it be allowed to legally buy and import US food and medicine.

November 9, 2001: Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy writes a letter to Attorney General Ashcroft demanding answers for Ashcroft's expansion of powers and refusal to appear before Congress.

November 10, 2001: Unrelated: bin Laden reportedly claims to have nuclear and chemical weapons. Another translation of the interview has bin Laden stating that the US is already using nuclear and chemical weapons against Afghanistan, but not claiming that he has them himself. bin Laden also states that Afghanistan is the only Islamic country.

November 10, 2001: China is officially inducted into the World Trade Organization.

November 10, 2001: Speaking before the United Nations, warns that countries which ignore or support terrorism will eventually become overthrown by terrorists.

November 10, 2001: Before the United Nations, announces his intent to create a state named Palestine.

November 10, 2001: Switzerland allows US humanitarian flights over its airspace.

November 10, 2001: Pakistan deports British journalist Christina Lamb after she uncovers efforts by the Pakistani military intelligence service to arm and resupply the Taliban.

November 10, 2001: In Rome, 20,000 march in opposition to the US war in Afghanistan, while a counterprotest supporting the war gathers 100,000 in the official numbers given by the Italian police. Other numbers suggest there were as many as 240,000 anti-war protesters and as few as 40,000 pro-war protesters, depending on who you ask.

November 10, 2001: Unrelated: Serbian secret police block a main highway for an hour to protest the extradition without their knowledge of suspected war criminals that they apprehended.

November 10, 2001: With the United States among the absent, 165 countries agree to begin implementing the Kyoto Protocol anti-pollution treaty.

November 10, 2001: Secretary of State Colin Powell says the Northern Alliance must not be allowed to capture Afghanistan's capitol Kabul.

November 10, 2001: Unrelated: The Pakistan News Service reports that bin Laden owns at least one nuclear bomb, a 2 kiloton "briefcase" device built by Russia in 1988, and has probably imported it into the United States.

November 10, 2001: Professor Noam Chomsky says that the US war in Afghanistan is a worse act of terrorism than the attack on the US on September 11, and that the US has no authority to demand the extradition of bin Laden because it refused to extradite a criminal wanted by Haiti. He clarifies his definition of terrorism by saying that all states are terrorist by their ability to commit acts of aggression.

November 11, 2001: Unrelated: The Daily Telegraph reports receiving an internally distributed al Qaeda videotape in which bin Laden admits carrying out the terrorist attack in September. Previously, bin Laden has only said that attacks would continue until his demands are met, but has not outright claimed responsibility. In the video, he is also reported to state that victims of the attack were not innocent because they were involved in the American economy, that "yes, indeed, we kill innocents", and that "killing Jews is the highest priority".

November 11, 2001: Unrelated: Anthrax is found in the offices of Senators Dianne Feinstein(CA), Larry Craig(ID), and Bob Graham(FL). All three offices are located in the same building as Daschle's office where a letter containing anthrax was received, and it is believed the anthrax came from the same letter.

November 11, 2001: The Northern Alliance captures the city of Taloqan. US bombing of the Taliban's front lines are reportedly a major contributing factor in the recent successes of the Alliance, whose forces were in retreat before the US and its allies got involved. The Alliance also reports that it is in position to seize Kabul at any time.

November 11, 2001: The Taliban reports seeing Russian and Indian officers on the ground in Afghanistan.

November 11, 2001: Karl Rove, one of Bush's top advisors, meets with movie industry executives to discuss entering nationalist imagery into entertainment and creating public service advertisements using popular movie and television stars.

November 11, 2001: Taiwan is inducted into the World Trade Organization.

November 11, 2001: Unrelated: Two of Pakistan's top nuclear scientists report having met bin Laden twice this year while working for a relief organization in Afghanistan.

November 11, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announces that the US has bombed suspected biological and chemical weapons production facilities in Afghanistan.

November 11, 2001: Representative Ron Paul claims that the recent police powers act was not made available for Congressmen to read before it was approved without any debate.

November 11, 2001: Announces that Pakistan will receive $1 billion in aid as a reward for assisting the US.

November 11, 2001: After two months of delay, newspapers release the results of a unofficial recount of Florida's presidential election ballots showing Gore winning by every standard in which each vote is counted, although by not more than 60 to 115 votes out of the six million cast. The media concentrates on Bush winning if ballots from certain counties are ignored, and even Democratic papers announce that the "official" result is a Bush victory. During the recount and delay, every leak to the media from the recount operation has been that Gore votes were being found at an exponentially higher rate than Bush votes and that the eventual result was certain to be an indisputable landslide Gore victory.

November 11, 2001: The remains of Egyptian dead of a plane crash outside of New York two years earlier are delivered to Egypt.

November 11, 2001: Unrelated: Terrorist mastermind Yasser Arafat is greeted with great applause by the United Nations General Assembly, greater than was given to Bush when he spoke the previous day.

November 12, 2001: After refusing to freeze the assets of the terrorist Hizb Allah organization, Lebanon announces that it is in full cooperation with the US's fight against terrorism.

November 12, 2001: Unrelated: In New York, an Airbus A300 crashes on takeoff after both engines, the tail fin, and a wing fall off the plane, killing all 266 passengers and crew. The crash is blamed on turbulence from being in the wake of another jet.

November 12, 2001: The Northern Alliance advances throughout Afghanistan, conquering Harat and the capitol Kabul. The Alliance asks the United Nations to send peacekeepers to assist in forming a government.

November 12, 2001: King Abdullah of Jordan announces that he has been discussing with other Arab leaders the forming of a collective treaty recognizing Israel's existence in exchange for Israel giving land to Arab refugees and their descendants for an independent, third state in Palestine. The refugees, who have since the wars called themselves Palestinians as if they are the only ones, were denied integration into the societies of any regional state except for Jordan while Israel currently grants them self-rule and autonomy over the lands it conquered from Jordan and Egypt in 1967. The United States has been key in preventing various regional conflicts from turning into larger wars, and Bush has recently stated his desire for a solution similar to what Abdullah recommends.

November 12, 2001: An 82mm mortar is fired at a United Nations patrol in Kuwait, and two people in military garb are seen firing from across the border into Kuwait. The mortar's trajectory suggests it was fired from Iraq. When Iraq is asked to investigate, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Azis says that "the Kuwaitis always fabricate lies against Iraq as part of the American campaign".

November 13, 2001: The US intentionally bombs the Kabul offices of independent television network Al Jazeera, eliminating the station's ability to broadcast from Afghanistan.

November 13, 2001: Unrelated: A German court convicts four people, including three Libyan Embassy employees, of the bombing of a disco in 1986 that killed two US soldiers.

November 13, 2001: Unrelated: For the first time ever, a black man, Wilton Gregory, is elected the top Roman Catholic bishop of the United States.

November 13, 2001: Orders the creation of a military tribunal to try foreign-born suspects in secret and outside the rule of either civilian or military law. No such tribunal has been convened since WW2, during which the Supreme Court had declared that someone who enters the US "for the purposes of waging war by destruction of life or property" is subject to such trials.

November 13, 2001: Reaches an agreement with Russia to cut the size of the countries' nuclear arsenals. Outside of the agreement, pledges to reduce the US arsenal by 5,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. Later reports state that the agreement fell through.

November 13, 2001: The Saudi royal family buys four pages of advertisements in the Washington Times to build public support for the King.

November 13, 2001: The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a group created by Senator Joe Lieberman and Lynne Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, releases a report titled "Defending Civilization" which names and accuses 40 college professors and Wesleyan University's president of not being patriotic enough for having said such things as "We should build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls", "I deplore those who are using rhetoric and deploying troops without even thinking before they speak", "An eye for an eye leaves the world blind", "Not all Americans want revenge", "Ignorance breeds hate", and "If Osama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind the attacks, the United States should bring him before an international tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity". A day earlier, the same organization issued a press release in support of another college professor who had referred to the Unites States as "the United Snakes" and whose opinion of the September 11 terrorists was "anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote".

November 2001: Reports appear that hundreds of schoolchildren were massacred by the Northern Alliance in Mazar e-Sharif. Other reports are that five hundred Taliban soldiers and allied militia were trapped in a school complex and fought to the last man, most dying as the building was collapsed by Alliance tanks. There is no apparent link between the two sets of reports, and each report differed from others that were similar.

November 2001: It is reported that Taliban troops are infiltrating refugee camps in Pakistan. Pakistan begins fortifying their border within days.

November 2001: The Northern Alliance retreats in disarray from Kunduz after being fired upon by Taliban troops whose commander had promised their surrender. Later, hundreds of Taliban soldiers are executed by Arab and Pakistani fighters, alternatively reported as either volunteer militiamen or an elite al Qaeda brigade, who believed the Taliban were ready to surrender. Refugees claim that these foreign-born soldiers are rounding up and executing all men of Tajik and Uzbek descent.

November 2001: The Northern Alliance announces that it will take no prisoners who are of foreign blood.

November 2001: US libraries are ordered to destroy public records which could contain information that could be used by terrorists against crucial public facilities.

November 2001: Unrelated: China expels 35 foreigners who had demonstrated in support of the Falun Gong movement which China considers an illegal expression of religion and a terrorist cult.

November 2001: Unrelated: California's department of health declares that materials with radioactivity under 25 millirads / year, equivalent to 175 medical X-rays, may be freely dumped in public landfills without special permits or needing to label the waste radioactive.

November 14, 2001: Orders the filling to capacity of the US's Strategic Oil Reserve, which has never before met its capacity of 700 million barrels.

November 14, 2001: The Western aid workers charged with proselytizing are released by conquering Alliance troops to the Red Cross, who call in United States helicopters to retrieve them.

November 14, 2001: Unrelated: Senator Paul Wellstone introduces a bill to prevent Major League Baseball from kicking out two teams.

November 14, 2001: Unrelated: Congressman James Traficant calls for the overthrow of Iran's government.

November 15, 2001: A militia of 1000 Hazara ethnics marches on Kabul.

November 15, 2001: Papers on the production of nuclear and chemical weapons, as well as inventory records of al Qaeda's military equipment, are discovered in a Taliban Defense Ministry facility in Afghanistan. A rumour spreads that one of the nuclear papers was a famous hoax from the Journal of Irreproducible Results, titled "How to Build an Atom Bomb".

November 15, 2001: Unrelated: Conservative groups accuse Senator Patrick Leahy and the Democratic Party of racism for not confirming a Hispanic judge. Leahy's spokesman claims that the Judiciary Committee has been too busy to get around to it.

November 15, 2001: Mohammad al-Alami, Al Jazeera's District of Columbia correspondent, is arrested at Waco airport after the station's credit card which he used is linked to transactions to Afghanistan. He is questioned and released.

November 15, 2001: German Chancellor Schroedor barely wins a vote of no confidence in the lower house of Parliament, 336-326. Many lawmakers had opposed his support of the US war in Afghanistan and his commitment to send 3,900 German troops.

November 16, 2001: Unrelated: A letter sent to Senator Patrick Leahy tests positive for anthrax. The letter was mailed within the same day and location as the letter sent to Senator Daschle.

November 16, 2001: Economic reports indicate a slight deflation in the US due mainly to sharply reduced energy costs.

November 16, 2001: The Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare releases a memo condemning Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's past and present use of terrorism for political gain and discouraging the Bush administration's attempts to support Arafat without stopping his use of terror.

November 16, 2001: A woman is visited by Secret Service agents who accuse her of having "anti-American material", supposedly a poster of Bush hanging himself. After she shows them a poster of Bush hanging lynch victims representing the people executed by Texas during his term as governor, the agents decide that the poster is not sufficiently anti-American to be a problem.

November 17, 2001: Congress passes a bill to deputize airport security guards as federal workers for the next three years.

November 17, 2001: The United Nations World Food Programme announces that it is getting enough food into Afghanistan to save the estimated six million who were at risk of starvation due to the drought and civil war. The US bombing had made it difficult to deliver aid.

November 18, 2001: Unrelated: An Iraqi oil tanker attempting to run the US blockade sinks after being boarded by US troops. Two American sailors and three Iraqis are missing, and one Iraqi dies. The sinking is reported as an accident.

November 18, 2001: Congressmen Brian Kerns, Darrel Issa, Nick Rahall, and John Cooksey meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad to discuss improving relations between Syria and the US, and removing Hizb Allah from the US's list of terrorist organizations.

November 18, 2001: Tens of thousands march in London against the war. Police say there were 15,000 but organizers claim 100,000 marched.

November 18, 2001: Unrelated: Phillips Petroleum and Conoco announce plans to merge and become the US's third largest oil company.

November 18, 2001: Unrelated: Senators Tom Daschle and Richard Gephart visit Mexican relatives of victims lost in the attack on the World Trade Center.

November 18, 2001: Katharine Seelye of the New York Times reports that Bush has been rescinding Clinton's environmental regulation policies over the past two months. The report includes as examples allowing road building in national forests, making public lands more accessible to mining companies, weakening energy use standards for appliances, and weakening wetland protections. The road building regulation had been rescinded in April, putting the report's accuracy in doubt.

November 19, 2001: Journalists Harry Burton and Azizullah Haidari of Reuters, Julio Fuentes of El Mundo, and Maria Grazia Cutuli of Corriere della Sera are captured and executed in Afghanistan by an unknown armed party who later robs their bodies. Other journalists who were captured are released when their guide claims that they are Muslims.

November 19, 2001: Unrelated: A letter sent to the Calvo Mackenna Childrens' Hospital in Chile tests positive for anthrax. The letter was mailed from Switzerland, although the return address is in Florida.

November 19, 2001: Signs a bill to federalize all airport security personnel.

November 19, 2001: Secretary of State Colin Powell gives a speech announcing a vision for "two states, Israel and Palestine, side by side", ignoring the existing Palestinian Arab state in Palestine which is called Jordan. Powell also accuses the Palestinian Authority of not acting on the declarations they give the West that they are taking steps to end terrorist attacks, and urges Israel to remove security checkpoints and to stop retaliating against terrorist attacks.

November 19, 2001: Unrelated: The United Kingdom Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority announces that it will pay for mental health costs for relatives of victims of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington who watched the events on television.

November 20, 2001: Hosts a Ramadan dinner for the ambassadors of over fifty Muslim countries.

November 20, 2001: The Northern Alliance accepts the UN's invitation to hold peace talks in Germany.

November 20, 2001: Raises the bounty on bin Laden's death or capture from $5 million to $25 million.

November 20, 2001: The US accuses North Korea and Iraq of developing biological weapons, and requests that the UN inspect these countries.

November 20, 2001: The State of Oregon sues Attorney General John Ashcroft to uphold the state's assisted suicide law.

November 20, 2001: Thomas Ricks of The Age, an Australian paper, reports that the CIA has been conducting its own attacks on Afghanistan with its own ground forces and aircraft operating outside of the US armed forces' command.

November 21, 2001: Unrelated: A 93 year old recluse in Connecticut dies of anthrax.

November 21, 2001: Airport security workers threaten to strike over the recently enacted airport bill which requires airport security workers to be US citizens. In some airports, as many as 80% of security workers are immigrants who would lose their jobs.

November 21, 2001: The Navy announces that it will begin searching merchant ships in the Persian gulf.

November 21, 2001: City of Portland, Oregon police refuse to cooperate with Attorney General Ashcroft's request to question 5,000 men. Oregon law forbids questioning anyone who is not accused of a crime.

November 21, 2001: Pakistan sentences Maulana Sufi Mohammed, leader of the Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-e-Mohammedi, to three years in jail for possessing illegal weapons and incitement to violence upon his return from Afghanistan where he led a militia.

November 21, 2001: The US and 29 other nations sign the Cyber Crime Treaty.

November 22, 2001: Pakistan closes the Taliban's embassy in Islamabad.

November 22, 2001: The United Nations requests the United States stop dropping food aid on Afghanistan after two boys mistake cluster bomblets for aid packages in separate incidents, the bomblets killing one and taking the hand of the other.

November 22, 2001: Taliban commanders surrender Kunduz, but fighting continues and the Northern Alliance is unable to enter the city.

November 22, 2001: The Taliban offers a bounty of $50 million for the capture of George W. Bush.

November 22, 2001: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announces that al Qaeda troops should be killed or imprisoned, rather than allowed to withdraw.

November 22, 2001: Unrelated: China announces its intent to land a man on the moon within ten years.

November 23, 2001: The Northern Alliance reports that Pakistani military planes are airlifting Taliban-allied soldiers out of Kunduz.

November 23, 2001: Unrelated: The Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds a ruling that forbids a man from having any more children after he refused to pay $25,000 in overdue child support for his nine children.

November 23, 2001: Over 1000 Taliban soldiers surrender in Kunduz.

November 23, 2001: A World Food Program convoy is attacked by bandits in Afghanistan, and convoy personnel are robbed of money and personal items.

November 24, 2001: Unrelated: Islamic Resistance's leader declares war on the United States after its top general is killed by Israel, calling the killing of a soldier during wartime a "terrorist act".

November 24, 2001: In a Democratic Party radio address, representatives declare that women must play a role in the new government of Afghanistan.

November 24, 2001: It is reported that eight bombs strike Pakistani soil during a US raid on Taliban positions on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

November 24, 2001: Spain refuses to extradite al Qaeda suspects to the United States unless they will be tried in civilian courts and will not be subject to the death penalty.

November 25, 2001: Unrelated: A storm of six tornados kills 12 in Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

November 25, 2001: Unrelated: According to Associated Press reporter Ted Bridis, data security company Network Associates has assured the FBI that its software will avoid detecting government backdoors and wiretaps. Network Associates vehemently denies that it has had any contact with the government. Bridis claims to have gotten his information from one of the company's senior executives. Competing company Symantec soon announces that it will do the same.

November 25, 2001: 300 al Qaeda soldiers who promised their surrender from Kunduz to the Northern Alliance smuggle grenades into their prison in Mazar e-Sharif, where they overpower their guards and battle with Northern Alliance troops. The US deploys 40 troops and drops 30 bombs on the prison complex to assist the 500 Northern Alliance troops battling the POW revolt. Hundreds of al Qaeda soldiers die in a battle that lasts three days. A CIA agent and 40 Northern Alliance troops, including three generals, are killed in the fighting and five US soldiers are injured by a stray bomb. Amnesty International calls for an international investigation into the "disproportionate use of force", as Iraq calls the result a "massacre" and Pakistani religious leaders call for a day of mourning over the "barbaric act". International journalists at the scene have reported that the al-Qaeda soldiers fought to the last man, while some biased organizations have reported that not a single captured soldier had fought back and they were all massacred by US troops while sitting peacefully in their cells, a widespread claim easily refuted by television footage of the battle, although six bodies were found to have had their hands bound.

November 25, 2001: The National Bureau of Economic Research announces that the US is officially in a recession. The standards used by the NBER for defining a 'recession' are not reported, other than that they are different from the standard of six months of declining growth used by most economists.

November 26, 2001: Hundreds of US Marines are airlifted to a position near the Taliban stronghold of Kahandar. Marine helicopters strike an incoming Taliban armoured convoy. The new base is dubbed Camp Rhino.

November 26, 2001: Declares that producing weapons of mass destruction is a terrorist act, and warns Iraq of consequences if it does not allow UN inspectors to search for evidence of producing such weapons.

November 26, 2001: The United Nations condemns the US's actions against terrorist supporting businesses because people rely on these businesses and would have financial problems if the businesses were shut down. The UN also claims that there is no evidence to connect al-Barakaat to al Qaeda; The US has claimed bin Laden is a founding member of the company, and that there are numerous links between the two.

November 26, 2001: When asked if the United States would invade Spain in the future of the war on terrorism, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher states that the United States is not currently invading Spain.

November 27, 2001: Shots are fired across the North and South Korean border. South Korea accuses the North of firing first, but says the shots appear to have been accidental.

November 27, 2001: Representatives from various factions within the Northern Alliance hold peace talks in Germany. It is decided that an international peacekeeping force will not be accepted.

November 27, 2001: Journalist Ken Hechtman of the Montral Mirror is captured and imprisoned by an unknown party in Afghanistan. He is released after four days of negotiations.

November 27, 2001: Turkey asks the United States to pay it $5 million a month for the operating costs of the 90 man special forces unit it has planned to send to Afghanistan, and says that the costs will go up as the unit uses additional equipment.

November 27, 2001: Unrelated: The Hubble Space Telescope detects sodium in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star.

November 27, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft reports that around 600 people are still being held of the 1100 arrested, and many of them are suspected of being terrorists.

November 28, 2001: Ulf Stromberg, a cameraman for TV4, is killed by robbers in Afghanistan.

November 28, 2001: Jordan, Egypt, and Syria warn the US not to attack Iraq.

November 28, 2001: Unrelated: The credit rating of Enron energy corporation is lowered to "junk bond" status as its stock is dumped in the most massive sell off in history. The company had reported $12 billion in debt versus $62 billion in assets, but secret debts have since been disclosed by accountants and a buyout by another company was cancelled. Enron files for bankruptcy three days later.

November 28, 2001: Appoints Harold "Hal" Stratton, former Attorney General of New Mexico, co-chair of the Lawyers for Bush campaign, and president of the anti-regulation Rio Grande foundation; as head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Stratton had earlier signed onto a letter from fifty right-wing organizations that urged Bush to drop the antitrust suit against Microsoft, blaming the economic recession on the judge's decision to break up Microsoft as punishment for its crimes and praising Bush's upper class tax cut as "growth-oriented".

November 29, 2001: Egypt complains to the US that it has not been notified about the arrest of Egyptian citizens and has not been told their names.

November 29, 2001: Surviving al Qaeda shoot two medics at Mazar e-Sharif, and a third medic is reported missing. The United Nations calls for an inquiry into the deaths of the revolting prisoners.

November 29, 2001: Rejects Cuba's offer to compensate Americans who lost property in Castro's rise to power in exchange for the lifting of the US embargo. Earlier Cuban offers had come with a demand that the US pay it $181 billion, but it is not reported whether this demand was a part of the current offer.

November 29, 2001: Meets with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Anzar and praises Spain's support of the US.

November 29, 2001: North Korea announces that it will take "countermeasures" against the United States.

November 29, 2001: Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly accuses prison escapee Clayton Wagner of carrying out terrorist threats against abortion clinics in the name of the "Army of God". The same day, he also offers amnesty to illegal immigrants who offer information against al Qaeda.

November 29, 2001: Defends his plan to try terrorist suspects in secret tribunals by saying "we are at war". The United States Congress has not declared war.

November 29, 2001: Unrelated: News photographer Jason Henske is arrested for treason after taking pictures of a nuclear power plant. The county attorney decides not to prosecute.

November 29, 2001: Unrelated: US government sources report that the type of anthrax used in the attacks on senators Daschle and Leahy is a specific strain which is only available to five government and private labs, and two of those have only had it since spring. It is also reported that the Senate office building is completely contaminated by anthrax on all floors.

November 29, 2001: A Washington Post poll shows 59% of the American public supports trying terrorism suspects in secret tribunals rather than lawful courts with that number rising to 64% when told Bush supports this, 73% supports eavesdropping on suspects' discussions with their lawyers, 78% support invading Iraq, and 60% support risking large military casualties to capture bin Laden. Bush's approval rating is reported at 89% with 69% strongly approving.

November 29, 2001: Secretary of Interior Gale Norton is charged with contempt of court.

November 29, 2001: The Department of Homeland Security announces that a terrorist attack is planned within the next few days.

November 30, 2001: Asks Russia not to allow the closing of bankrupt TV-6, Russia's largest independent television station.

November 30, 2001: China and Russia pledge to fight terrorism no matter where it happens or who supports it.

November 30, 2001: Unrelated: Republican National Committee Chairman James Gilmore announces his resignation effective January. Gilmore's term as Governor of Virginia expires around the same time.

November 30, 2001: A senior Pashtun delegate walks out of peace talks being held in Germany, claiming inadequate representation of Pashtuns.

December 1, 2001: 80 surviving al Qaeda soldiers from the revolt at Mazar e-Sharif surrender to the Northern Alliance. Three claim to be US citizens, and one is quickly identified as John Walker of Fairfax, California.

December 1, 2001: Unrelated: Two members of Shining Path are arrested in Peru for conspiring to bomb the US embassy.

December 1, 2001: The Pakistani Observer reports that the bodies of 124 US soldiers killed in the war are being transferred to Germany where they will be classified as missing in action. Dawn, another Pakistani paper, reports that over 500 US soldiers have died in the war. Another report mirrored in several Arab news sources is that 50 US soldiers died attacking the city of Harat. The US has only reported the death of one CIA agent in battle, and a half-dozen soldiers dead in accidents.

December 2, 2001: 80 Taliban soldiers held prisoner in Mazar e-Sharif die as an explosion destroys the cargo container serving as their prison, according to the Daily Telegraph. It is not clear whether they are the same as the 80 who surrendered earlier. The same article describes the response to the armed revolt as a "slaughter of prisoners of war" and a "massacre".

December 2, 2001: Northern Alliance commanders report that the US has errantly bombed several villages in eastern Afghanistan over the previous night, killing at least 70 civilians. The US denies the report.

December 2, 2001: Announces plans to add 400 National Guard troops to the Canadian border.

December 3, 2001: After a series of Arab attacks kill 25 Israeli civilians in two days, Bush states that Israel has a right to defend itself, a reversal of his prior policy that Israel must not retaliate to attacks upon its people, and the US votes against a series of UN resolutions blaming Israel for the terrorist attacks and declaring that Israel has no right to claim jurisdiction over Jerusalem.

December 3, 2001: Freezes the assets of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in the US, due to ties between it and the terrorist Islamic Resistance organization. The act is condemned by the American Muslim Alliance, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America, Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim American Society, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Muslim Student Association of USA and Canada.

December 3, 2001: In a cover story on the Bush presidency, Newsweek magazine heralds Bush's ignorance of history as making a president who "is busy making history.. Bush would rather look forward than backward.. the result is a president who operates without evident remorse or second guessing".

December 4, 2001: Dispels criticism about his plan for secret military tribunals by saying that the US is at war, and that since no tribunals have been held yet so it should not be a problem.

December 4, 2001: Three US troops are killed by an errant US bomb, which also injured 19 Americans and five Northern Alliance soldiers including Pashtun chieftain Hamid Karzai.

December 4, 2001: Tajikistan allows the US and France the use of an airport for military purposes.

December 5, 2001: Unrelated: The US and Russia announce that they have complied with the START treaty to dismantle nuclear warheads and delivery systems.

December 5, 2001: Unrelated: The city council of Paris, France, confers honorary citizenship upon convicted cop killer and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. The symbolic honor was last bestowed upon Pablo Picasso in 1971.

December 5, 2001: Unrelated: The House of Representatives votes 396-11 to cut off aid to Zimbabwe unless the country respects the land ownership of white farmers. White descendants of British colonists own most farmland in the African country, and black militias have often lynched white farmowners to steal their land. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has slated 95% of white-owned farmland for seizure, and stuffed the Supreme Court with four additional judges after they declared his policies illegal, in order to obtain a different decision which the extra new judges gave him.

December 5, 2001: Unrelated: Turkey asks the US to lift import restrictions on Turkish goods and forgive its $5 billion debt.

December 5, 2001: Pakistan arrests 23 suspected al Qaeda members who had snuck across the border from Afghanistan.

December 5, 2001: France criticizes the US for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted by 165 countries.

December 5, 2001: 73 members of the Genovese Mafia crime syndicate are arrested by the FBI.

December 5, 2001: General Electric is ordered to pay for the dredging of the Hudson River which it polluted.

December 5, 2001: The Senate approves a bill to allow Mexican trucks free travel on US highways.

December 5, 2001: Unrelated: Pat Robertson steps down as head of the Christian Coalition.

December 5, 2001: The US and Israel refuse to attend the Conference of High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The conference document, signed by 122 countries, calls the lands Israel seized from Egypt and Jordan in 1967 "Occupied Palestinian Lands", refers to armed terrorist militaries and paramilitaries as "civilians" and demands they be treated as such, and condemns Israel's policies of closing its border and enacting economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority when PA-supported terrorists attack Israel. Three days later, the UN High Commissioner for Civil Rights publicly accuses Israel of terrorism for bombing a Palestinian Authority mortar factory.

December 5, 2001: Appoints former Montana Governor Marc Racicot as head of the Republican party. Racicot will be allowed to continue in his current job as a lobbyist for Enron, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, American Forest and Paper Association, the Recording Industry Association of America, and other businesses and trade organizations.

December 6, 2001: The Taliban claims to have killed 93 US troops and captured 6.

December 2001: By one vote, the House votes to give Bush "fast track" trade authority. This allows the President to make trade agreements which cannot be amended by Congress before they are voted on.

December 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says that the United States will not accept any agreement which allows Taliban leader Muhammad Omar to live in freedom. The Northern Alliance's representatives meeting in Germany decide to allow Omar clemency when he surrenders.

December 2001: The US Commission on Civil Rights head Mary Frances Berry refuses to seat or recognize Bush's nominee to the committee Peter Kirsanow after the commission votes 5-3 to reject his appointment.

December 2001: Russia announces an alliance with NATO.

December 2001: The National Resource Defence Council and the Southern Utah Wilderness Council, independent environmental groups, sue the Department of the Interior, alleging that since Bush's inauguration the department has leased land to oil and gas developers without conducting environmental studies as required by law.

December 2001: Ashcroft denies the FBI's request to examine firearms purchase records for the detainees accused of supporting terrorism.

December 2001: The World Socialist Web Site claims that Secret Service agents visited the Artcar Museum in Houston shortly after it opened an exhibit on November 7 titled "Secret Wars" displaying artwork representing "artists' response to secret wars" by the US. According to the article, the agents inquired as to who funded the exhibit.

December 2001: The Taliban agrees to surrender Kahandar to the Northern Alliance.

December 2001: Speaking before the US Senate, Attorney General John Ashcroft says that people who criticize the actions and methods of his police are "aiding terrorists" and "erode our national unity".

December 2001: Unrelated: US District Judge Royce Lamberth orders the Department of the Interior to shut off all public access to all of its electronic information systems related to the Indian Trust Fund until these systems can be properly secured. Security analysts hired by the judge were able to effortlessly create, modify, and delete Indian Trust Fund records.

December 2001: Unrelated: A judge in New Jersey orders over 100 teachers jailed for refusing to work without a contract.

December 2001: Unrelated: Police in Sweden admit to doctoring video evidence. This is apparently unprecedented, although people have known it would eventually happen. During the Clinton administration, US television networks were caught doctoring news broadcasts by doing such things as adding their logo to blank walls in the scenery and eliminating advertisements for their competitors.

December 2001: Unrelated: Lebanese newspaper As Safir reports that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned the US near the end of August that a terrorist attack was expected soon, but he had no knowledge of the scale of the attack.

December 2001: An Uzbek journalist reports that 10 to 15 American casualties of war have been arriving at a single Uzbek airbase every day since late November. The Pentagon reports that total US casualties have been 8 dead and 41 wounded.

December 2001: Unrelated: Lieutenant Colonel Martha McSally files a lawsuit against the US government for forcing her to abide by local discriminatory customs in Saudi Arabia where she is based.

December 2001: British reporter Robert Fisk is nearly lynched by Afghan refugees in Pakistan, his life saved by an intervening Muslim cleric. The Afghans had apparently placed blame on him for the US bombing.

December 2001: A captured al Qaeda soldier is reported to be an Australian citizen.

December 8, 2001: Pakistani paper Dawn reports that a meeting of Nobel Prize for Peace laureates discussed the US war in Afghanistan, during which retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that the US is targeting civilians just like the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center,

December 9, 2001: The US asks Pakistan for permission to interrogate some of its top nuclear scientists.

December 9, 2001: The US claims to have a videotape showing bin Laden gloating over the success of his terrorists beyond his expectations on September 11.

December 9, 2001: Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who was imprisoned and released by the Taleban in October, reports receiving information from Al Jazeera that Western intelligence agencies tried to have her killed by the Taleban to bolster support for the war against t

_________________Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you...

December 9, 2001: Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who was imprisoned and released by the Taleban in October, reports receiving information from Al Jazeera that Western intelligence agencies tried to have her killed by the Taleban to bolster support for the war against terrorism. The documents had purportedly been delivered to the Taliban and contained erroneous information showing Ms. Ridley to be a Mossad agent, and included a private photograph of her whose only copy had been kept in her apartment.

December 9, 2001: Attorney General John Ashcroft promises that terrorists tried by "military tribunals" that are not subject to military law will receive "full and fair" trials.

December 9, 2001: North Korea accuses the US of planning to attack it next after Afghanistan, and pledges to inflict "unimaginably telling blows" when the invasion comes.

December 10, 2001: University of New Hampsire economics professor Marc Herold reports that 3,767 Afghan civilians have been killed by the US between October 7 and December 6. This exceeds the Taliban's estimate.

December 11, 2001: Unrelated: Irv Rubin, the head of the Jewish Defense League, and another high ranking JDL member are arrested for plotting to bomb a Los Angeles mosque and the offices of Congressman Darrel Issa.

December 11, 2001: Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman held on immigration charges since August, is charged with counts of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, destroy aircraft, murder US employees, destroy US property, commit air piracy, and use weapons of mass destruction. France requests that the US not impose the death penalty.

December 11, 2001: Unrelated: Police from many nations stage a coordinated raid on members of the Drink or Die copyright infringement ring.

December 12, 2001: Unrelated: Charges against Russian computer programmer Dmitri Sklyarov are postponed for a year in exchange for his willingness to testify in a case against his employer Elcomsoft. While in Russia, Sklyarov had written a program to read data in Adobe eBook file format, a legal act in Russia but made criminal in the US by a law passed in 1998.

December 12, 2001: The Christian Science Monitor reports that an al Qaeda leader claims bin Laden is in Pakistan.

December 12, 2001: Unrelated: House Majority Leader Dick Armey announces plans to retire at the end of his term.

December 13, 2001: The US releases a videotape, reportedly captured by Northern Alliance troops in Jalalabad, that shows bin Laden casually discussing how the attack on the World Trade Center exceeded his planned expectations. Bush had originally refused to release the tape, and there was a delay of several days between the announcement of its existence and its release, leading many to theorize that it may have been faked. Some reports are that the US released a version with no audio and English subtitles. Egypt and Saudi Arabia announce that the tape is genuine.

December 13, 2001: Unrelated: A mail bag at the US's embassy in Austria tests positive for anthrax.

December 13, 2001: The House passes a bill to upgrade voting machines throughout the country.

December 13, 2001: Unrelated: Five armed men assault India's parliament, killing six policemen and a groundskeeper. India blames the attack on terrorist groups supported by Pakistan.

December 13, 2001: Gives notice to Russia of the US's intent to withdraw from the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty. The treaty provides for unilateral withdrawal in this matter.

December 13, 2001: Invokes executive privilege to deny Congress access to documents for a wide array of matters, including investigations into campaign fund raising abuse and abuses of power at the Boston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This prompts Republican Congressman Dan Burton to condemn Bush as a "dictatorial president" who is "acting like he's King".

December 13, 2001: Unrelated: The FDA requests that the Red Cross be held in contempt of court for violating medical safety regulations.

December 13, 2001: Unrelated: The Surgeon General of the United States declares obesity an epidemic.

December 13, 2001: Unrelated: The New York Supreme Court decides that Internet publishers are counted as press under the First Amendment.

December 14, 2001: US troops arrive in the Philippines to train Philippine soldiers to fight against terrorists.

December 14, 2001: A freighter carrying 24,000 tons of corn to Cuba leaves port, for the first food shipment from the US to Cuba since the 1962 embargo.

December 14, 2001: The US announces that it will offer rewards for information leading to the arrests of Palestinians suspected of killing American citizens.

December 14, 2001: New Zealand eliminates its air force save a single air transport division.

December 14, 2001: Justin Huggler of The Independent, a British newspaper, accuses the US of carrying out a massacre of Taliban troops at Kahandar's airport. The reported method of massacre is the aerial bombing of combatants who had not surrendered.

December 14, 2001: Pakistan allows the US the long term use of an airbase at Jacobobad.

December 2001: Unrelated: James Merritt, head of the Southern Baptist Convention, calls on Christians to pray for Muslims to convert to Christianity on the last day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

December 15, 2001: The US vetoes a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel.

December 15, 2001: The US claims to have heard short-range radio transmissions from bin Laden in the area of the Tora Bora fortress in Afghanistan. After a weeklong assualt by US and regional tribal warriors (widely reported as not being affiliated with the Northern Alliance), the tribals announce having captured Tora Bora.

December 15, 2001: The US and India hold naval exercises off India's west coast.

December 15, 2001: Unrelated: Biologists confirm that the anthrax from the recent attacks on media and political figures is a type manufactured by the US Army in the 1960s and held at five laboratories in the US.

December 15, 2001: Unrelated: Saudi foreign minister Prince Nayef states that there is no evidence any of the hijackers on September 11 were Saudi, despite there being recorded video and audio evidence.

December 16, 2001: Unrelated: UK Chancellor Gordon Brown asks the US to initiate a second Marshall Plan, this one directed at impoverished countries.

December 16, 2001: Unrelated: The CIA announces that it has and (according to a possibly overzealous CNN editor) makes use of a stock of the same anthrax used in the attacks on government officials and the media. Previous reports have been that there were only five stocks in existence, none of which was that CIA's. It is reported that the FBI is investigating a private contractor who worked with the CIA's anthrax stock.

December 16, 2001: While giving a commencement speech at California State University in Sacramento, Janis Heaphy, publisher of the Sacramento Bee newspaper, is interrupted and drowned out by hecklers when she asks "To what degree are we willing to compromise our civil liberties in the name of security?"

December 17, 2001: Unrelated: A fire damages Saint John's cathedral in New York.

December 17, 2001: Unrelated: Haiti's presidential palace is captured by rebelling soldiers in a coup attempt. Loyalists retake the building after a day.

December 18, 2001: Unrelated: Lebanon demands the US act to restrain Israel after Israel stages practice bombing raids on several Lebanese cities.

December 18, 2001: Yemen shells a village that reportedly contains an al Qaeda base. Arab newspapers report that US fighter-bombers took part in the attack.

December 18, 2001: Unrelated: Bandits kill five people in Cuba, including two Americans.

December 19, 2001: Pakistani troops capture several hundred al Qaeda soldiers retreating across the border. Five Pakistani soldiers are killed when one group of surrendered al Qaeda troops overpower their guards and escape.

December 19, 2001: 100 masked troops claiming to be American soldiers invade the Comoros Island of Moheli, seize control of the local government and security forces, and distribute pamphlets charging the local head of government with supporting al Qaeda. After the US denies that these are their troops, the Comoros army retakes control, killing five invaders. It is theorized that the gunmen are French mercenaries who have tried to stage several coups in Comoros.

December 19, 2001: Iran accuses US naval forces of firing upon an Iranian tanker, wounding two crewmen.

December 19, 2001: Unrelated: Executives of Tyson Foods, the country's largest poultry processor, are charged with smuggling illegal immigrants into the country to work for low wages at Tyson's plants.

December 20, 2001: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice accuses the Iranian government of training and funding terrorist warfare against the United States.

December 20, 2001: Unrelated: Argentina's president resigns after days of economic riots. The new president resigns after a week.

December 20, 2001: Freezes the assets of Umnah Tameer E-nau, a charity founded by Pakistan's former Atomic Energy Commissioner and accused of assisting al Qaeda's nuclear weapons research, and Lashkar e-Taiba, accused by India of the attack on its parliament and many earlier terrorist attacks.

December 20, 2001: Orders civilian aircraft mechanics to continue working without a contract.

December 20, 2001: Unrelated: Consumer advocates and government critics condemn an amendment inserted into a defense spending bill by Senate Appropriations Committee members Ted Stevens and Patty Murray that would lease 100 Boeing 767 aircraft at $20 million per aircraft per year for 10 years when the purchase price of these aircraft is $110 million. The Air Force did not ask for this deal, but announces its support.

December 21, 2001: Unrelated: Fox News pulls a four-part series on Israeli espionage operations against the US and removes the documents from its Web site.

December 21, 2001: US forces bomb a convoy believed to be carrying Taliban leaders. Other claims suggest that the convoy was carrying local politicians to Kabul to participate in the new government. A survivor supports this, and claims that an opposing tribe called in US air support and said they were al Qaeda troops after a road closure forced them through this tribe's territory. The US repeats its conviction that it hit a convoy of Taliban leaders, claiming that reconnaissance had observed the convoy since its point of origin leaving an al Qaeda base and that the convoy fired surface to air missiles at US planes.

December 21, 2001: Cuban leader Castro claims that his refusal to accept US aid and to instead demand the ability to buy the goods was "not a political move".

December 21, 2001: Unrelated: One of the insurgents arrested in connection with the attack on India's parliament says that the attack was coordinated by Pakistan's intelligence services.

December 21, 2001: Unrelated: Russia begins construction of its first new warship in ten years.

December 21, 2001: The FBI issues a warning to consumers of Microsoft XP operating system to turn off its Universal Plug and Play features after a remote system exploit was discovered in this five weeks earlier.

December 21, 2001: Unrelated: Congressmen Frank Wolf and Lucille Roybal-Allard write a letter to General Electric threatening to write a law to ban hard liquor advertising on television unless GE's subsidiary NBC voluntarily withdraws such ads from its television broadcasts.

December 21, 2001: The US imposes $75 million worth of trade sanctions upon Ukraine over widespread copyright violations taking place in the country.

December 21, 2001: British peacekeepers arrive in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim issues an order that the peacekeepers are not allowed to use force or to disarm any "belligerents".

December 22, 2001: Unrelated: An unidentified vessel sinks in Japan's exclusive economic waters after firing upon Japanese coast guard interceptors and receiving return fire from the Japanese ships. Japan announces that the ship was scuttled by its crew, was in radio contact with North Korea during the battle, was of a similar design to a ship that fled Japanese waters and docked in North Korea in 1999, and that Korean writing was found on the personal effects of drowned crew. China expresses its "concern toward Japanese use of military force in the East China Sea", and North Korea denies that the ship was one of theirs and denounces what it calls a "crime that is nothing but brutal piracy and unpardonable terrorism that can only be conducted by the samurais of Japan in defiance of international law".

December 22, 2001: Pakistan leader Musharraf condemns India's decision to recall its ambassador and cut trade routes as "arrogant and knee-jerk", and refuses to take the same actions against India.

December 22, 2001: Unrelated: A British man with explosive in his shoe attempts to bomb an American Airlines passenger jet, but is restrained by crew and passengers. He is identified as Richard Reid, although the earliest reports suggested that this was certainly a pseudonym and his passport was fraudulent.

December 22, 2001: Unrelated: The Air Force grounds all C-141 cargo planes after the wing of one "collapses" as it is being refueled on the runway.

December 22, 2001: Unrelated: Zmag, a socialist magazine, reports that Argentine voters have in been crossing out the names of all politicians on the ballot and writing in Osama bin Laden, and that these votes constituted a majority in two precincts.

December 23, 2001: Unrelated: Pakistani fire kills two Indian soldiers across the border. India shells Pakistani positions in retaliation, and artillery battles continue throughout the month.

December 23, 2001: Unrelated: Pakistan accuses India of kidnapping and torturing a member of its ambassador's entourage.

December 23, 2001: Unrelated: Time Magazine declares that New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had a greater effect on the world than any other person this year.

December 23, 2001: Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, applies for asylum in Pakistan.

December 23, 2001: The Republican Party orders a full page newspaper advertisement of Saddam Hussein's face with text that Senator Thomas Daschle is refusing to allow any oil drilling on US soil in order to make the US dependent upon purchasing Iraqi oil. In reality, the oil purchases have been made for years under the United Nations' Food for Oil program wherein Iraq is allowed to sell a small amount of oil in exchange for food and medicine to relieve the UN blockade; and Daschle has only opposed oil drilling in national parkland, specifically the Arctic Wildlife Refuge where drilling for oil is a center of the Republicans' agenda.

December 23, 2001: Unrelated: Nigeria's Justice Minister is murdered in his home by masked gunmen. Three days later, the Nigerian senate is recalled from vacation for a special session. Two weeks later, the top aide to Nigeria's chief supreme court justice is murdered.

December 24, 2001: British police seize and search the cargo ship Nissa for 20 tons of plastic explosives to be used by al Qaeda in attacks on the United Kingdom, but find nothing. The ship, owned by the Great Eastern Shipping Company of India, carried 26,000 tons of sugar.

December 24, 2001: Unrelated: Hundreds of arson fires are set on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia throughout the fortnight beginning today. The fires strain the firefighting resources of Australia and New Zealand, and many run uncontrolled through parkland while firefighters try to save houses. Police arrest over twenty suspected arsonists, many of whom are children.

December 25, 2001: The Pakistan Observer claims that Osama bin Laden is dead of natural causes, specifically some form of lung disease.

December 25, 2001: Unrelated: India evacuates civilians from its border with Pakistan.

December 25, 2001: Unrelated: An anonymous Kuwaiti donor gives a five and a half yard long cake to US troops at Camp Doha.

December 25, 2001: Unrelated: Russia convicts a journalist of high treason for videotaping Russian naval vessels dumping nuclear waste in the Pacific Ocean.

December 25, 2001: A Secret Service agent of Arab descent and member of Bush's security detail is denied passage on an American Airlines flight.

December 26, 2001: The US asks Yemen to allow US troops to search for al Qaeda members there.

December 26, 2001: Unrelated: Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev denounces former Russian president Boris Yeltsin as "a liar" and that "Russian czars didn't have the kind of privileges he had".

December 26, 2001: Unrelated: Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of Brixton mosque in London, tells British authorities that there are at least 1000 Islamic extremists in the UK, including 100 willing to become suicide bombers, and that their numbers have grown "quite frighteningly" in the past several years. He mentions that Richard Reid, who attempted to bomb an airplane four days earlier, had attended mosque around the same time as Zacarias Moussaoui and that they may have met. Baker also states his belief that Reid was sent to test airport security for future operations.

December 26, 2001: The European Space Agency rejects NASA's recommendations to reduce use of the International Space Station.

December 26, 2001: Unrelated: China urges India and Pakistan to reduce tensions along the border.

December 26, 2001: Unrelated: Iraq claims to have hit an Allied aircraft which then retreated into Saudi airspace. Both US and UK spokesmen deny that any of their planes were shot down.

December 26, 2001: Al Jazeera interrupts its programming to broadcast a videotaped speech by Osama bin Laden in which he marks three months since the attack on September 11, accuses the West of hating Islam, and states that attacks on American civilians are justified because of the US government's support of Israel.

December 26, 2001: Unrelated: Hundreds of refugees at a Red Cross camp in Sanguette, France, escape and attempt to cross the Chunnel to England on foot before being beaten back by riot police.

December 26, 2001: The US announces that several captured al Qaeda members report having seen Richard Reid at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

December 26, 2001: Unrelated: It is reported that days before declaring bankruptcy, Enron corporation donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party and hired one of the higher-priced lawyers in Washington, DC. The Democratic Party refuses to accept the donation or return it to Enron, announcing that it will donate the $100,000 to a charity for fired Enron employees.

December 27, 2001: The Associated Press reports that the US is refusing to classify captured al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as prisoners of war, instead calling them "detainees".

December 27, 2001: The UN World Food Program reports that bandits and warring militias are preventing food aid from reaching Kahandar in Afghanistan. The Alliance commander of the region claims there are no such threats.

December 27, 2001: As reported in Conservative News, "conservative groups" congratulate themselves on defeating "the homosexual lobby" by convincing Bush to nominate someone other than Mary Fisher to chair the President's Advisory Council on AIDS. Fisher had gained infamy when, speaking at the Republican National Convention in 1992, she publicly announced she had contracted HIV from her husband.

December 27, 2001: JoongAng Ilbo, a South Korean paper, reports that elementary school children are singing "the Bin Laden Worship Song", a parody of a popular childrens' television show theme. Lines of the song declare bin Laden as "the person I admire most" and Bush as "the person I detest most", and announce "I want to be a terrorist when I grow up" and "I'm going to blow up the 63 building", a reference to Seoul's tallest skyscraper.

December 28, 2001: Britain's prison service dismisses two Muslim clerics for praising the September 11 terrorist attack.

December 28, 2001: Announces that the US will assist Russia in safekeeping its weapons of mass destruction. This is a direct reversal of previous Bush policy in which funding for these programs was cut.

December 30, 2001: The 101st Airborne Division of the US Army begins relieving the Marine Corps at Camp Rhino, and command is transferred on January 18th.

December 30, 2001: Unrelated: James Risen of the New York Times reports that al Qaeda had attempted to ally with Iran to coordinate attacks on US civilians.

December 30, 2001: Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah condemns terrorists and declares it the duty of Muslims to oppose them.

December 30, 2001: Pakistan freezes the assets of two nuclear scientists.

December 31, 2001: The US bombs the village of Niazi Qayali in eastern Afghanistan, killing over 100. The US states that extensive reconaissance confirmed this was an al Qaeda position, while villagers state that there were no Taliban or al Qaeda in the village. In the coming days it becomes clear that civilians were residing in the area that was hit, while a BBC weapons expert claims that two of the buildings that were hit were ammunition dumps.

December 31, 2001: Unrelated: Columbian authorities find $41 million in counterfeit US currency.

December 31, 2001: Unrelated: The Navy admits that its testing of a powerful sonar in 1997 was the cause of a large number of whale deaths.

December 31, 2001: A federal court blocks the FCC's approval of Southern Bell Corp's move into Oklahoma until the government has looked into serious antitrust concerns.

December 31, 2001: Radio host Jim Hightower accuses John Ashcroft of trying to reinstate the Cointelpro program that infiltrated and attempted to destroy opposition political groups in the 1960s.

December 2001: Orders a pay raise for federal employees.

Year 2001: Unrelated: The United States Capitol Historical Society prints a calendar that erroneously includes 31 days in the month of November.

2002

January 1, 2002: Unrelated: Twelve european nations convert to the Euro currency unit.

January 2, 2002: The US demands that Afghanistan's new government capture and extradite Taliban leader Muhammed Omar.

January 1, 2002: Unrelated: Twelve european nations convert to the Euro currency unit.

January 2, 2002: The US demands that Afghanistan's new government capture and extradite Taliban leader Muhammed Omar.

January 2, 2002: Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill announces that the federal government will surpass the $5.95 trillion debt ceiling by February, and urges Congress to lift the ceiling to $6.7 trillion. The ceiling is the amount of debt that Congress allows the Treasury Department to issue. While proposing his tax cut, Bush had promised that this ceiling would not be reached until 2008.

January 2, 2002: Unrelated: A federal judge throws out Puerto Rico's lawsuit against the United States regarding noise caused by the US navy's use of Vieques Island as a gunnery range.

January 2, 2002: Unrelated: A National Guardsman on duty at San Francisco Airport accidentally shoots himself in the butt when unholstering his weapon.

January 2, 2002: Unrelated: A Massachusetts court declares that children conceived by artificial insemination after the death of the parents have the same rights of inheritances as other children.

January 2, 2002: During an interview with Guerilla News, Canadian journalist Gregory Palast clarifies his earlier accusations of Bush forbidding investigation into the bin Laden family, now claiming that Bush ordered all US intelligence services to cease all investigation of Saudi funding of Osama bin Laden himself and his al Qaeda group.

January 3, 2002: Afghanistan's new government frees 260 Taliban POWs.

January 3, 2002: Unrelated: Former President Clinton's dog Buddy is hit by a car and killed.

January 3, 2002: Unrelated: Lebanon orders a halt to the distribution of the popular newspaper Asharq al-Awsat after it reports that Lebanon's president escaped an assassination attempt in Monte Carlo in December.

January 3, 2002: Unrelated: Douglas Gansler, State's Attorney for Montgomery County in Maryland, announces that Hassan Tantai, actor in the critically acclaimed film Kandahar, is the fugitive assassin Daoud Salahuddin, also known as David Belfield. In 1980, Salahuddin had shot Iranian diplomat Ali Akbar Tabatabai in a suburb of the District of Columbia on the behalf of the new Iranian government.

January 3, 2002: Unrelated: Japan's National Police Agency announces that it will create an organization similar to the US's Federal Bureau of Investigation in order to track organized crime and Internet crime.

January 3, 2002: Pakistan arrests 50 members of two terrorist groups that India accuses of carrying out the attack on the Indian Parliament.

January 3, 2002: Unrelated: A section of the US Capitol building is closed after a threatening letter is received by the office of Thomas Daschle. Tests show the letter to contain talcum powder, not anthrax.

January 3, 2002: Nina Olson, the US Treasury Department's National Taxpayer Advocate, urges Congress to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, claiming that it complicates the tax affairs of many middle class taxpayers. The AMT is charged to wealthy businesses and individuals who find enough loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying taxes.

January 3, 2002: Unrelated: It is reported that a Michigan law urges the state government to prominently display the national motto "In God We Trust" on all government buildings, claiming that the US Constitution demands this.

January 3, 2002: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld admits that US propoganda often contains factual errors, as much so as pictures of someone else claimed to be of bin Laden.

January 3, 2002: Unrelated: US intelligence assists Israel to capture a shipment of arms destined for the Palestinian Authority. Although Israel claims the ship is registered to the PA and crewed by PA officers, the PA claims no knowledge or responsibility for the ship and accuses Israel of timing the ship's capture to coincide with the arrival of US ambassador Anthony Zinni. In the coming days, the British newspaper Lloyd's List reports that the ship is registered to an Iraqi citizen, Iraq denounces the seizure as an act of piracy, and the US envoy leaves in futility.

January 4, 2002: The Pentagon reports the first combat death of a US soldier in Afghanistan. Several other soldiers are reported injured from the battle near Khost. A CIA agent had been killed in earlier combat near Mazar e Sharif. Mideast news sources such as Dawn, Paknews, and Arab News have been reporting thousands of US soldiers dead throughout the operation, sometimes reporting more US troops dead in a single battle than the US has reported were in Afghanistan at all.

January 4, 2002: Pakistan gives the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan into US custody.

January 4, 2002: Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati accuses the US of carrying out "the worst kind of terrorism" in Afghanistan.

January 4, 2002: Unrelated: The Traditional Values Coalition, a far-right fundamentalist group, accuses the government's National Public Radio of slandering Christianity.

January 4, 2002: Senator Thomas Daschle accuses the Republican Party of being the primary cause of the current recession.

January 4, 2002: Releases a subset of Ronald Reagan's presidential papers after reviewing them for appropriateness. By law, all of Reagan's papers were to have been released upon Bush's inauguration.

January 4, 2002: Columnist Paul Krugman of the New York Times reports that "the Republicans have moved so far to the right that ... focus groups literally refused to believe accurate descriptions of the stimulus bill that House Republican leaders passed on a party-line vote back in October."

January 5, 2002: South Korea announces its intent to purchase 111 300km-range missiles from the US. South Korea currently has no missiles of that range.

January 5, 2002: Cuban leader Castro announces that he does not oppose Bush's decision to imprison al Qaeda members at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba.

January 5, 2002: Cuts funding to the largest Iraqi opposition group due to their poor bookkeeping.

January 5, 2002: Promises never to raise taxes, "not over my dead body", or to scale back upcoming tax cuts, which he equivocates with a tax raise.

January 5, 2002: Unrelated: A 15 year old steals a Cessna light aircraft and crashes it into a Bank of America skyscraper, killing him and causing minor damage to the building. A note found in his pocket reveals that he supported the terrorist attacks on September 11, while his aquaintances report that he was a strong supporter of the United States after the attack.

January 5, 2002: An anti-Bush protest in Portland, Oregon, is dispersed by an announcement that Bush's planned visit was cancelled, which it was not. A reporter overhears someone on the police radios mention that "the misinformation is working".

January 6, 2002: India claims to have shot down a Pakistani reconnaissance drone over Indian airspace.

January 6, 2002: Unrelated: A Chinese citizen and New York resident who had returned to China to verify reports of torture in Chinese prisons and was subsequently arrested upon arrival in May 2000 gives an interview in which she renounces the practice of Falun Gong as a brainwashing cult and announces how she "treasures every day" that she is in prison.

January 6, 2002: Unrelated: The US Embassy in New Zealand receives a letter containing cyanide and a threat to disrupt a golf tournament.

January 6, 2002: Pakistan claims to have arrested four members of India's secret service agency RAW who were planning a suicide bomb attack against US forces based at Jacobobad airport. Western news agencies do not carry the story.

January 6, 2002: Unrelated: The Dallas Morning News reports that half of the cocaine seized by Dallas police in drug raids is actually sheet rock. The Mexican consolate asks that Mexican nationals deported after such raids be allowed to return.

January 7, 2002: Unrelated: Singapore announces that 15 suspected al Qaeda terrorists arrested in December had been planning attacks against the US embassy and American businesses in Singapore.

January 7, 2002: After visiting with British prime minister Tony Blair, Pakistani dictator Musharraf pledges to act against terrorist groups based in his country.

January 7, 2002: Promotes running a deficit during recessionary periods and times of national emergency, and suggests that raising taxes (or returning them to somewhere between future and past levels) would be a disaster.

January 7, 2002: Announces that he will closely watch the trial of a man accused by China of importing Bibles, an illegal act.

January 7, 2002: Announces that he will jail anyone who "espouses a philosophy that's terrorist and bent".

January 7, 2002: Unrelated: The Gemini North Telescope takes an image of a planet orbiting the star 15 Sge. The planet is estimated to be between 55 and 78 times the size of Jupiter.

January 7, 2002: A federal judge strikes down a Bush order to forbid the hiring of contractors who fail to discourage employees from joining unions.

January 2002: 1500 US soldiers are transferred to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba.

January 8, 2002: Unrelated: Nagalingam Parameswaran, Malaysian diplomat and member of the United Nations' government of East Timor, resigns from his post accusing his UN colleagues of racism.

January 8, 2002: Unrelated: Iran tries sixteen critics for treason. One defense lawyer is barred from attending the trial, and another resigns after being refused knowledge of the charges against his clients.

January 8, 2002: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld denies the existence of a confidential report that recommends the resuming nuclear weapons test.

January 8, 2002: Signs a law to increase federal control over childrens' public school education.

January 8, 2002: Unrelated: The Supreme Court unanimously declares that carpal tunnel syndrome is not a disability covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act in the case of a woman whose injury caused by her normal job duties prevented her from continuing this job, because these injuries did not prevent her from carrying out most normal life activities.

January 8, 2002: General Richard Meyers demands that Afghanistan turn over to the United States three Taliban ministers who surrendered to the new Afghan government.

January 8, 2002: Unrelated: The National Academy of Sciences suggests that Congress enact laws to punish software makers for security problems.

January 8, 2002: Unrelated: The IRS announces that it is trying to account for 2300 missing computers, mostly laptops and PDAs.

January 9, 2002: A US KC-130 refueling plane crashes in Pakistan, killing its crew of seven.

January 9, 2002: Al Gore quips that he was "the first one laid off back in January" and "I was your next President of the United States".

January 9, 2002: Orders a review of US pension laws, after thousands of Enron employees lost their pensions in the company's bankruptcy.

January 9, 2002: Unrelated: Indonesian representative Tamalia Alisjahbana presents a petition of 10,000 signatures supporting the United States and opposing religious extremism, in opposition to widespread calls for war against the United States.

January 9, 2002: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announces a partnership between the Energy Department and the automobile industry to produce hydrogen fueled cars.

January 9, 2002: Unrelated: Alabama governor Don Siegelman calls for a statewide constitutional convention to weaken the "powerful forces" of the state Legislature.

January 9, 2002: Unrelated: Michigan passes a bill to create a "cybercourt" where lawyers and judges meet through teleconferencing.

January 10, 2002: Unrelated: France's parliament overturns a legal ruling that allowed children with birth defects to sue doctors for not aborting them.

January 10, 2002: Demands that Iran turn over to the US any Taliban fleeing across the border, and threatens retaliation, "diplomatic initially", if Iran tries to destabilize the new Afghan government. Iran responds that it will not allow bin Laden supporters into the country under any circumstances.

January 10, 2002: Russia demands that the US destroy warheads that Bush had earlier promised to dismantle, rather than store them for later use as Bush has recently announced.

January 10, 2002: Unrelated: A French scientist who had lobbied for reduced salt in snack food announces that he has been spied on by the French secret police.

January 10, 2002: The CIA reports that China will have nearly 100 nuclear missiles aimed at the United States by 2015.

January 10, 2002: Unrelated: An F-16 crashes in training in New Jersey.

January 10, 2002: Unrelated: The Supreme Court declares in a 5-4 ruling that juries in capital cases must be informed of the option of sentencing the defendant to life without parole. Voting against are Rehnquist, Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia.

January 10, 2002: Unrelated: Norway indicts computer programmer Jon Johansen for developing a computer program to read DVD discs in a method that is explicitly allowed by the Norweigan constitution. In 1998 he had been arrested for developing the same program, leading to the Norweigan equivalent of a Congressional investigation which found heavy pressure from the US entertainment industry on the police to arrest him.

January 10, 2002: Unrelated: A Hamilton, Ohio county judge rules that the carrying of a concealed firearm is a Constitutional right.

January 10, 2002: Attorney General John Ashcroft removes himself from the criminal investigation into the Enron collapse due to conflicts of interest.

January 10, 2002: Camp Rhino is attacked by a small band of 8 to 14 gunmen. There are no reports of casualties. Marines involved in the firefight report that the gunmen fired upon a plane transporting al Qaeda members to prison in Cuba, while officers report that the plane left fifteen minutes before the battle began.

January 10, 2002: Unrelated: Arthur Anderson Limited Liability Partnership announces that it has destroyed documents from its audit of Enron corporation.

January 11, 2002: Unrelated: India's defense minister announces that his country is prepared for war with Pakistan.

January 11, 2002: Unrelated: Ford Motor Company closes five automobile plants, costing 20,000 jobs. The company's fortunes have changed from a $6.6 billion profit in 2000 to a $692 million loss in the third quarter of 2001.

January 11, 2002: Secretary of State Colin Powell lends his support to Israel's destruction of the runways of Gaza International Airport and dozens of Arab houses in Rafah as "a defensive action".

January 11, 2002: Lebanon rejects the US's accusation that Hizb Allah is a terrorist group, and demands that the US provide evidence of its claims.

January 11, 2002: Iran condemns Bush as "rude and impudent", and warns that his threats would "not have the intended results".

January 11, 2002: While the Senate is out of session, appoints former Ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs and Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as Solicitor of the Department of Labor. During the Reagan administration, Reich had illegally used federal funds to wage a propoganda campaign within the US media in support of the terrorist Contras of Nicaragua. Scalia has called called ergonomics health laws "quackery" and "junk science".

January 11, 2002: Signs a bill to double pollution cleanup funds and give legal immunity to developers of polluted land.

January 12, 2002: Pakistani dictator Musharraf gives a speech renouncing terrorism, declaring two Pakistani terrorist groups and two right wing religion-based parties illegal, banning political messages from religious functions, and announcing the requirement for houses of worship to register with the government.

January 12, 2002: Unrelated: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe declares that the United Kingdom is at war with Zimbabwe.

January 12, 2002: The US announces that one of the al Qaeda soldiers being held at Guantanamo Bay is a British citizen.

January 13, 2002: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation presents a video of al Qaeda troops practicing an attack on a golf tournament.

January 13, 2002: Unrelated: 60 Iranian members of Parliament protest against the arrest and conviction of a fellow MP for insulting the judiciary. In response, Iran's religious leader, also the head of government and judiciary, pardons the MP.

January 13, 2002: Faints for a short period of time after choking on a pretzel.

January 13, 2002: 660 US troops arrive in the Philippines to be sent into combat areas and return fire if fired upon, but not to initiate action. The Philippine constitution forbids foreign troops from operating in offensive roles on Philippine land.

January 13, 2002: Unrelated: The World Trade Organization rules US export subsidies illegal, penalizing the US $4 billion in trade sanctions.

January 14, 2002: Unrelated: Czechoslovakia demands that the US move Radio Free Europe out of the download area of Prague because the number of terrorists trying to blow it up are a danger to the public.

January 14, 2002: Unrelated: The US Embassy in Yemen temporarily closes due to terrorist threats.

January 14, 2002: Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit visits the United States for a five day goodwill tour.

January 14, 2002: Tonga closes its international ship registry in response to a Palestinian Authority arms smuggling ship flying the Tongan flag. The US assisted in detecting the ship.

January 14, 2002: Congressman Dan Burton demands an explanation from Navy Secretary Gordon England over the decision to deny the Kennedy battle group the ability to train on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico.

January 14, 2002: Surgeon General David Satcher announces his resignation in order to persue a career at Morehouse School of Medicine.

January 15, 2002: Signs an order allowing development of wetlands and seasonal streams.

January 15, 2002: Marines discover several arms dumps just outside Camp Rhino in the area from where fire was received earlier. Several tunnels are also found and destroyed, some containing further caches of weaponry.

January 15, 2002: Unrelated: On the island of Jolo in the Philippines, 17 people are dead in a gun battle between the Philippine military and police defending a crowd that tried to lynch a soldier. The crowd was participating in a demonstration of support for Nur Misuari, a former governor who had been arrested for taking up arms against the government. The next day, policemen ambush an army jeep, killing four soldiers, and the government orders the army to retreat.

January 15, 2002: Unrelated: After the arrest of hundreds of terrorist supporters by Pakistan since Musharraf's speech, India announces that it is still waiting for Pakistan to take "first steps" of action against terrorists.

January 15, 2002: Relatives of people killed in the September 11 terrorist attack visit Afghanistan to meet with relatives of people killed in the US bombing campaign.

January 15, 2002: Unrelated: An American aid worker in Afghanistan is kidnapped for ransom by bandits while delivering medicine. He is released after three days.

January 15, 2002: Unrelated: Several international news organizations including Associated Press, Agence France-Press, Reuters, Cable News Network, British Broadcasting Corporation, American Broadcasting Corporation, and Corporate Broadcasting System petition against Israel's refusal to renew the press licenses of Arab journalists.

January 15, 2002: The US declines to charge John Walker with treason, instead charging him with conspiracy to kill Americans overseas, supporting foreign terrorist organizations, and engaging in prohibited transactions with the enemy.

January 15, 2002: Unrelated: Representative Nancy Pelowsi(sp?) is appointed House Minority Whip, becoming the highest ranking Congresswoman in history.

January 15, 2002: Unrelated: The Supreme Court decides 6-3 that the federal government can sue a business for violating the rights of an employee who has signed a contract with the business to settle disputes between the employee and business in a private court. Dissenting judges are Thomas. Rehnquist, and Scalia.

January 15, 2002: The US discovers al Qaeda documents mentioning an agent whose travels match those of Richard Reid, who tried to bomb an airplane in December. The documents were found on a computer purchased by a Wall Street Journal reporter in Kabul, and it took US computers five days to break the Windows 2000 40-bit encryption.

January 16, 2002: The United Nations Security Council issues a resolution requiring all countries to stop all sales of arms to and travel by Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and groups associated with them, and to freeze their financial assets.

January 16, 2002: The State Duma of Russia votes 326-3 to condemn Bush's decision to end the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and requesting President Putin confer with the Duma to discuss the future of Russia's security.

January 16, 2002: United Nations human rights chief Mary Robinson demands that the United States treat captured al Qaeda troops as prisoners of war under the Geneva convention.

January 16, 2002: Issues an executive order barring Justice Department workers from joining or forming unions.

January 17, 2002: Guides television cameras through the White House for a special show on the real life duties of the President. At the end of the day, the cameras are barred from a dining hall where he discusses policies with Republican lawmakers.

January 17, 2002: Unrelated: A volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo erupts, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into Rwanda and destroying the city of Goma.

January 17, 2002: Unrelated: Ford posts a $5.45 billion loss for the year 2001. The report says Ford earned a $3 billion profit in 2000, differing from earlier reports that Ford earned over $6 billion in profits that year.

January 17, 2002: Unrelated: Scientists discover that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, inluding the Ross Ice Shelf, is thickening.

January 17, 2002: The US urges Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to "take action against those responsible" after a soldier in Arafat's private terrorist army attacks a Jewish rite of passage celebration, killing six partygoers.

January 17, 2002: North Korea requests that the United Nations investigate accounts of US soldiers killing civilians in the Korean war of 1950-1953.

January 17, 2002: Waives sanctions on China related to the 1989 killing of dozens of peaceful protestors in Tianmen Square so that the US may legally donate firefighting equipment to the city of Shanghai.

January 17, 2002: British Liberal Democrat party leader Charles Kennedy describes the al Qaeda prisoners at Camp X-Ray as being kept hooded, in shackles, and under sedation.

January 18, 2002: Bosnia delivers six suspected terrorists to the US after the Bosnian Supreme Court orders their release.

January 18, 2002: The International Red Cross inspects the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station which has been dubbed Camp X-Ray.

January 18, 2002: Britain charges two Algerians of attempting to bomb the US Embassy in Paris, France.

January 19, 2002: Unrelated: Bugging devices are found on the Chinese president's plane after it returns from repairs in the US. Chinese soldiers had kept the plane under guard throughout its construction and refitting.

January 18-19 2002: The African nations of Sierra Leone and Sudan both end their civil wars. US negotiators were reported to be involved in Sudan's peace deal.

January 20, 2002: The US issues a $5 million bounty for information leading to the arrest of Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzik and Ratko Mladic.

January 20, 2002: The Archbishop of Wales declares that the US's war on Afghanistan has lost credibility and is morally equivalent to the terrorist attacks against the US on September 11.

January 20, 2002: Unrelated: The New York Fire Department abandons plans for a firefighters' memorial after accusations of racism. The department's planned memorial showed an African, a Hispanic, and a white firefighter raising a flag while the event that the memorial was based on involved three white firefighters.

January 20, 2002: Declares this day "National Sanctity of Human Life Day" to urge legislaters to make abortion illegal.

January 2002: At the urging of Representative Chris Smith, bans all funding to the United Nations Population Fund which delivers tampons to Afghan women.

January 2002: Attorney General Ashcroft orders the covering of the semi-nude Spirit of Justice statue in the Justice Department.

January 2002: US troops kill 15 and arrest 27 people that the US claims are al Qaeda members. Their village claims that they were not, that they had gone to visit an area where Taliban had been and withdrawn from, and that the US fired without offering the men the opportunity to surrender. After three days, the story completely disappears from the international press.

January 21, 2002: Former Senator and presidential candidate Al Gore gives a speech in India that journalists are barred from attending. A report suggests that he introduced himself as the man rightfully chosen to be the President of the United States.

January 21, 2002: Unrelated: Terrorists open fire on the US diplomatic center in India, killing five Indian guards. India says the Pakistani government ordered the attack, while Pakistan denies this. Days later, three Bangladeshi and three Indians are arrested.

January 21, 2002: Unrelated: An audit finds that the US's main biological warfare center has lost 27 samples of diseases, including anthrax and ebola.

January 21, 2002: The Wall Street Journal condemns as "liberal" the Human Rights Watch report on the United States for the year 2002, taking offense that the humanitarian organization considers liberties lost to Ashcroft's police powers bill worth mentioning, and claiming that Human Rights Watch wrote in support of the Taliban when in fact the organization celebrated the Taliban's removal from power as a great advancement.

January 22, 2002: Lawyer Stephen Yagman files a lawsuit against the United States over the treatment and status of the al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba.

January 22, 2002: Unrelated: K-Mart, the third largest discount store chain in the US, declares bankruptcy.

January 22, 2002: AOL-Time-Warner sues Microsoft in civil court after it becomes increasingly apparent that the Bush administration does not want to punish Microsoft for its crimes.

January 22, 2002: The US asks Yasser Arafat to find a way to end terrorist attacks after a member of Arafat's private army opens fire on a crowded street, killing two civilians and injuring over forty. Arafat is currently under Israeli house arrest. In related news, Islamic Resistance announces that it will make war against Jews everywhere by any means.

January 22, 2002: Gives a speech for a rally to illegalize abortion.

January 23, 2002: Unrelated: The Senate office building reopens.

January 23, 2002: The US imposes trade sanctions on Ukraine over rampant copyright violation there.

January 23, 2002: Sweden and Denmark report that some of the captives at Guantanamo Bay are citizens of their countries. Germany demands that the US treat captured al Qaeda personnel as Prisoners of War. Sweden and Great Britain announce in advance their opposition to any decision to put their citizens to death.

January 23, 2002: Unrelated: The FBI, Secret Service, and Los Angeles Police raid and shut down publication of the anarchist website Raise The Fist.

January 23, 2002: Wall Street Journal bureau chief Daniel Pearl is kidnapped by a Pakistan-based terrorist group which accuses him of being a CIA agent and demands the release of al Qaeda members who are Pakistani citizens.

January 23, 2002: Unrelated: The US revises its dress code for women in the military serving in Saudi Arabia, no longer requiring the wearing of local clothing.

January 23, 2002: The US and France sign an agreement to "liberalize" airline regulations. This allows the airlines to sell seats on each others' flights.

January 24, 2002: A US State Department helicopter is shot down by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia rebel group and destroyed by the Columbian government as rebels overrun the position.

January 24, 2002: Unrelated: Iraq fires upon US and UK airplanes patrolling the "no-fly" zone. The US and UK return fire.

January 25, 2002: The US announces that relations are improving between it an Libya.

January 25, 2002: Unrelated: Christian preacher Jerry Falwell predicts that a terrorist attack will occur in San Francisco because of the city's acceptance of homosexuality.

January 25, 2002: Unrelated: Saudi Arabia announces that it will not allow female US soldiers to leave their bases in Saudi Arabia without wearing traditional local clothing.

January 25, 2002: Unrelated: Former Enron vice chairman Clifford Baxter is found dead of suicide.

January 26, 2002: Secretary of State Colin Powell requests that a judicial system decide whether each al Qaeda prisoner individually should be given the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva convention.

January 26, 2002: Saudi Arabia threatens the withdrawl of support for the US if any actions are taken against Yasser Arafat, calling the man responsible for several times more needless deaths than bin Laden a "man of peace".

January 27, 2002: Unrelated: Five high ranking Russian officials are among 14 killed in a helicopter crash in Chechnya.

January 27, 2002: Unrelated: Russia closes its last military base on Cuba.

January 27, 2002: Rumsfeld declares that the al Qaeda prisoners will not be granted Prisoner of War status.

January 28, 2002: Saudi Arabia asks that the US release the over 100 al Qaeda members who are Saudi citizens.

January 28, 2002: Unrelated: An armoury in Lagos, Nigeria, explodes due to a fire started at a nearby gas station. Hundreds drown fleeing into canals to escape the blaze.

January 29, 2002: Unrelated: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi fires popular Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka and her deputy Yoshiji Nogami over a government-stalling dispute in which either Tanaka or Nogami must have been lying.

January 29, 2002: Unrelated: Bush's niece Noelle Bush is arrested for purchasing a controlled drug with a fraudulent prescription.

January 29, 2002: Canada announces that its Joint Task Force 2 has been involved in capturing enemy troops in Afganistan and has handed captees over to the United States.

January 29, 2002: Gives the State of the Union Address in which he promotes increasing spending on defense, unemployment insurance, education, retirement, and health care while urging Congress to restrain spending; Promotes energy conservation and efficiency research; Takes credit for Senator Lieberman's idea to deliver part of the tax cut immediately and directly to American households, and implies this amount is his planned cuts in their entirety; Promises more overseas actions to fight terror; Names Hizb Allah, Islamic Resistance, and Islamic Jihad as terrorist groups, an act that Saudi Arabia and Syria have earlier threatened retribution for; and names North Korea as a primary terrorist state for its development of missile technology.

January 30, 2002: Newspapers report that many of the programs Bush promoted in his State of the Union speech are the same programs being eliminated by his budget.

January 30, 2002: The General Accounting Office announces it will file suit against Vice President Dick Cheney to obtain documents related to the secret energy committee meetings, the first time in the history of the office that it has been necessary to sue an executive official.

January 30, 2002: Unrelated: Pakistan arrests the Muslim priest that the kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl was en route to visit when he disappeared. Days later, the US announces that the preist is not a suspect.

January 30, 2002: Unrelated: An American civilian is killed by communist rebels in the Philippines near Mount Pinatubo, and a US military transport plane is hit by small arms fire while flying over the island of Lagos.

January 30, 2002: Mike Allen of the Washington Post reports that Bush is asking Congress to limit their investigation into the September 11 attacks to committees whose reports are made secret and kept from the public.

January 31, 2002: The US admits that it killed 21 friendly anti-Taliban militia in an attack earlier in the month.

January 31, 2002: Declares that a fetus is an "unborn child" to be treated by law as a live human being in government policy.

January 31, 2002: NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson announces that NATO will not support US attacks against any other countries without evidence that these countries were involved in attacks upon the US.

January 31, 2002: North Korea calls Bush's statements "little short of a declaration of war", condemns Bush's "political immaturity and moral leprosy", and warns that the US is not the only of the two with the will and ability to attack first.

January 31, 2002: Unrelated: Five Roma who were made orphans by the Holocaust sue International Business Machines corporation in Switzerland alleging that IBM sold machinery to Germany knowing it would be used to commit mass murders.

January 31, 2002: Unrelated: An old US satellite falls to earth over Egypt.

January 2002: Unrelated: It is reported that the anthrax used in the attack on Senator Daschle is not the Ames strain as previously reported, but a different strain that is only manufactured in Texas.

January 2002: A city in Afghanistan rebels against the new government after a warlord from a neighbouring province is appointed to govern the city. The city had already elected its own governor after the Taliban fell and before the new government formed. Over 60 are killed in the fighting and the national troops are repelled. It is reported that many of the national troops refused to fight, and that US bombers were in the area but chose not to intervene.

January 2002: Unrelated: The British Commonwealth votes against evicting Zimbabwe. Generally, white nations had voted to evict Zimbabwe while African and Asian nations voted to keep Zimbabwe in the commonwealth.

February 1, 2002: Unrelated: CNN airs a videotape of an Al Jazeera interview with Osama bin Laden in which bin Laden advocates killing American civilians. In retaliation, Al Jazeera cuts all relations with CNN, stating that CNN used poor judgement and disrespected its "special relationship" with Al Jazeera by "airing material that Al Jazeera itself chose not to broadcast". Al Jazeera further states that it will not give any further explanation for its actions or for its original decision not to air the tape itself. According to a BBC report, CNN and Al Jazeera had an agreement whereby CNN was allowed to air any of Al Jazeera's material.

February 1, 2002: King Abdullah II of Jordan gives his support to Bush's statements regarding Iran and Iraq.

February 1, 2002: Unrelated: A terminal at San Francisco airport is closed after a man's shoes test positive for ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in fertilizer and some explosives, and the suspect walks away while his guard searches for a supervisor.

February 1, 2002: Unrelated: Governor James McGreevey of New Jersey breaks his leg in a fall.

February 2, 2002: Unrelated: Al Jazeera announces that the interview it had condemned CNN for broadcasting was conducted under duress, and that Al Jazeera's correspondant had been kidnapped and given questions to read at gunpoint.

February 3, 2002: Columnist Molly Ivins accuses Bush of overturning banking regulations that Clinton had put into place to track down terrorist money laundering operations.

February 3, 2002: NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson calls upon Europe and Canada to greatly increase their military capabilities to match the US.

February 3, 2002: The US runs television advertisements during the Super Bowl that accuse drug users of complicity in terrorist attacks.

February 4, 2002: Iran warns the US that it can defend itself against attack.

February 4, 2002: A federal judge decides that Victoria Wilson, who was appointed to the US Commission on Civil Rights after the death of a commission member, may serve a full six year term. The Justice Department immediately appeals. The Commission had voted to refuse to seat Peter Kirsanaw, Bush's appointed replacement for Wilson.

February 4, 2002: Unrelated: Enron chairman Kenneth Lay refuses Congress's request to testify, and later steps down from his position.

February 4, 2002: Announces that the invasion of Afghanistan was "only the first step".

February 4, 2002: Delivers a budget wrapped in an American flag to Congress.

February 4, 2002: Unrelated: The American Academy of Pediatricians reports that homosexual couples can provide equal quality care to children as traditional families.

February 4, 2002: Unrelated: The National Academy of Sciences reports that there was no justifiable basis for diverting water from Klamath farms to rivers during the drought last year.

February 2002: Unrelated: Pakistani police arrest three men and charge them with the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl. Police find e-mails from the kidnappers on the computer of one of the suspects.

February 5, 2002: Mitch Daniels, head of the Office of Management and Budget, lies to Congress by claiming the recession as the biggest factor in the speculated decline of a long term surplus. In reality, tax cuts are the biggest factor.

February 5, 2002: Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, chairwoman of the Federation of American Scientists' Working Group on Chemical and Biological Weapons, reports her belief that the FBI has identified the person who sent anthrax to media and Democratic politicians, and suggests that no arrest has been made because the person is privy to highly classified knowledge that could cause political harm to the US if made public.

February 6, 2002: Unrelated: Allied Irish Banks reports that an employee of its US subsidiary has defrauded it of $750 million.

February 6, 2002: Six South Korean members of parliament write to the US to speak against Bush's rhetoric.

February 6, 2002: The US releases the 27 friendly anti-Taliban militia captured during a raid in January, and the CIA pays reparations to the families of the 16 killed.

Feburary 6, 2002: Telecommunications company Verizon sues the Federal Communications Commission over the FCC's keeping a $1.74 auction payment Verizon made during a bankruptcy auction on items that the FCC later returned to the bankrupt company NextWave Telecom.

February 6, 2002: A man in Indiana is arrested for carrying a sign that calls Dick Cheney "19th Century Energy Man".

February 7, 2002: Announces that the Geneva Convention applies to Taliban regulars, but none of the prisoners so far have been Taliban regulars.

February 7, 2002: Unrelated: Uruguayan banker Pablo Moreira charges the cockpit of an airliner and assualts the pilots. He is described as mentally disturbed.

February 7, 2002: A Central Intelligence Agency warplane bombs a group of automobiles in Afghanistan, reportedly killing a senior al Qaeda leader. The CIA suggests that it has killed Osama bin Laden or another high ranking al Qaeda leader.

February 7, 2002: The Christian Science Monitor reports that Hizb Allah is preparing to invade Israel. The report's headline blames the United States for this, but there is nothing in the story to corroborate the blame.

February 7, 2002: Unrelated: Conservative groups express anger that former President Bill Clinton is giving a speech in Taiwan. Clinton is accused both of impropriety in accepting a $300,000 fee and of undermining the war

_________________Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you...

February 7, 2002: Urges the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold Ohio's ban on abortions.

February 7, 2002: Unrelated: The State of New York files suit against Network Associates, makers of McAfee brand antivirus and security software, over restrictions in the software license that act as a prior restraint on free speech.

February 7, 2002: Unrelated: Three Marines die in a training accident when their truck rolls over.

February 7, 2002: Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill condemns the Senate's decision to make Bush's tax cut last ten years, calling the decision "lilliputian", condemning it as made by "ordinary people", and comparing it to signs saying "Coloured cannot enter here".

February 7, 2002: Unrelated: Friends of the owner of the website Raise The Fist, which was raided by the FBI in January, accuse the FBI of breaking into the owner's America Online account and harrassing and threatening them while the owner has been in police custody.

February 8, 2002: Unrelated: Zimbabwe cancels the visa of US Senator Russel Feingold.

February 8, 2002: The International Committee of the Red Cross announces that anybody captured under any circumstances during a war is eligible for Prisoner of War status under the Geneva Convention, a claim easily refuted by reading the Geneva Convention, something the Red Cross apparently didn't do.

February 8, 2002: Unrelated: Police in the Philippines arrest a man carrying over 100 passports, $50000 in cash, a map of Afghanistan, and a telephone with the name "Osama bin Laden" as the default contact on a flight to Kuwait.

February 8, 2002: Unrelated: Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo riot, assualting United Nations personnel and random civilians.

February 8, 2002: Condemns the Concord Monitor newspaper for running a cartoon comparing the effects of Bush's budget on Social Security to the effects of the hijacked airliners to the World Trade Center. The newspaper quickly publishes an apology for not refusing to run it.

February 9, 2002: The Netherlands promises to invest E800m in the US's Joint Strike Fighter program.

February 9, 2002: Unrelated: Princess Margaret of England dies of a stroke.

February 9, 2002: Iran threatens to destroy oil fields throughout the Persian Gulf if it is attacked by the United States.

February 9, 2002: Some of the 27 former captives from the botched US raid report that they were beaten by American soldiers while in US custody, including a 60 year old police chief who had his ribs broken. Reports indicate that some of those killed in the raid had been handcuffed and executed after their capture. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld orders an investigation.

February 10, 2002: German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder reports that Bush has informed him the US has no intention of attacking Iraq.

February 10, 2002: Colin Powell suggests that the US and Russia sign an agreement to reduce their nuclear arsenals.

February 10, 2002: Reports appear in reputable media that three villagers collecting scrap metal at a bombed out al Qaeda base had been killed by a US missile on February 7. US soldiers are deployed to block journalists' access to the villagers' hometown.

February 10, 2002: Unrelated: A drivers license examiner suspected of providing faked identification to immigrants is killed in a fiery automobile accident. Investigators find traces of gasoline and other accelerants on her clothing.

February 11, 2002: Iran holds massive anti-US rallies and Iran's president Khatami condemns Bush's "immature" leadership and blames the US for inducing the September 11 attacks upon itself through "faulty" foreign policy.

February 11, 2002: Unrelated: Jordan convicts US citizen Raed Hijazi of smuggling weaponry and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts while clearing him of charges that he was connected to al Qaeda. Hijazi accuses Jordan of falsely convicting him to win US aid dollars.

February 11, 2002: The FBI warns that a group led by Fawaz Wahya al Rabeei of Yemen may carry out a terrorist attack in the US after Tuesday.

February 11, 2002: The US urges Israel to halt its "counterproductive" policy of attacking Palestinian Authority government buildings in response to PA sanctioned attacks on Israeli civilians and military.

February 11, 2002: The US announces its absolute certainty that the CIA missile fired days ago hit al Qaeda targets.

February 11, 2002: The White House leaks a memo detailing Bush's effort to stop a campaign finance reform bill being considered by Congress.

February 11, 2002: Media magnate Ted Turner calls Bush another Julius Caesar and accuses Bush of trying to start a war with his "axis of evil" rhetoric.

February 11, 2002: Iraq allows Iran the use of its airspace.

February 12, 2002: Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke speculates that Bush will invade Iraq.

February 12, 2002: Pakistan arrests the leading suspect in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal bureau chief Daniel Pearl. The suspect reports that Pearl is still alive.

February 12, 2002: An anonymous posting at the Indy Media website claims that Ben and Jerry's ice cream was condemned by a speaker before the House Committee on Forests and Forest Health as "terrorist supporting" for its donations to left-wing organizations.

February 12, 2002: Unrelated: The State of Utah passes a bill that defines any interference with business employees or customers as terrorism, which could easily be used to declare unionists or eaves campaigners as terrorists.

February 12, 2002: Orders the overthrow of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein by any means.

February 12, 2002: Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North accuse Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of entering into an alliance with North Korea, Iran, and Iraq to sabotage the US's war effort from within, in respons to Daschle saying that each of these countries is a different situation and that different tactics would have to be used to defeat each of them.

February 2002: Britain releases one of the US's top suspects in the attack of September 11 after the US fails to provide any evidence of the man's guilt or relation to the attacks.

February 2002: Unrelated: Canadian Olympic skaters are awarded 2nd place after a flawless performance while 1st place goes to Russian skaters who performed a more difficult act but stumbled several times. After a few days of controversy, France admits to backroom politics favouring Russia and the Olympic committee declares a tie.

February 13, 2002: Camp Rhino is fired upon by gunmen who escape. US patrolmen searching for the attackers accidentally arrest friendly mercenaries.

February 13, 2002: Welcomes Pakistani leader Musharraf's visit to the US and praises his assistance in the fight against al Qaeda.

February 13, 2002: Unrelated: University of Minnesota student Colin McMillen reports that the US Government has ordered the seizure of imported computer serial cables, devices that do nothing more than carry electrons from one end to the other, because one end of the device is physically shaped so that it can attach to a Sega Dreamcast. According to the report, the US has declared this cable a copyright violation under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Later reports clarify that Customs has ordered all shipments from the cable's manufacturer, Lik-Sang, seized because the company had produced a computer chip to allow Sony Playstations to play imported video games and DVDs, which is a DMCA violation, even though Lik-Sang stopped producing these chips as soon as it was notified of their illegality.

February 14, 2002: Proposes an environmental plan that does not punish excessive pollution but rewards anti-pollution efforts with tax cuts.

February 14, 2002: Afghanistan's Minister of Civil Aviation is killed on a trip to Kabul airport. First reports are that he was lynched by a mob of religious pilgrims who accused him of cancelling flights to Mecca for the annual Hajj ceremony. Later, Afghanistan's leader Hamid Karzai accuses six generals of assassinating the minister and orders their arrest.

February 14, 2002: Iran arrests 150 refugees from Afghanistan and begins investigating them for links to al Qaeda.

February 14, 2002: Unrelated: Bahrain's Emir declares himself King and proposes a constitutional monarchy.

February 14, 2002: Unrelated: A retired Air Force sergeant is arrested for offering to sell trade secrets to Iraq.

February 14, 2002: Conservative groups condemn Secretary of State Colin Powell for encouraging sexually active people to use condoms.

February 14, 2002: Unrelated: The US Navy issues a report considering the effects of polar ice cap loss continuing at the current rate. The report suggests allying with Canada and Russia to regulate the new sea trade lanes, and suggests the possibility that the entire polar ice cap could disappear in summertime by 2050.

February 14, 2002: The Times of India reports that the US is dropping envelopes containing two $100 bills and a picture of Bush on Afghanistan.

February 15, 2002: Unrelated: The US and Britain test a nuclear bomb in Nevada.

February 16, 2002: Vice President Cheney threatens to invade Iraq and claims the US's allies will give full support to an invasion.

February 16, 2002: British troops in Afghanistan are fired upon by unknown gunmen. No one is injured, and reports are that the British were not able to find a target or return fire.

February 16, 2002: British troops in Afghanistan fire upon a car violating night curfew hours, possibly after mistaking the car's engine noises for gunfire. Four occupants of the car are injured and one is killed. The troops involved are relocated, while locals call for their execution. This may or may not be related to the other story involving British troops in Afghanistan this day.

February 16, 2002: The US threatens Canada with trade sanctions over reported monopolization of wheat trade.

February 16, 2002: Claims to support South Korea's attempts to engage in friendly relations with North Korea. Previously, Bush had demanded South Korea restrict peace talks with North Korea.

February 16, 2002: APB News lawyer Michael Ravnitzky reports that the Department of Justice has begun a policy of discouraging Freedom of Information Act requests from pesky journalists by refusing to acknowledge their status as members of the news media and charging them several hundred or thousand dollars to process the request.

February 16, 2002: The US bombs militias in Afghanistan, near the city of Khost, that were revolting against Karzai's rule.

February 17, 2002: Unrelated: Jim Crogan of the Indianapolis Star reports that the suspect "John Doe number 2" in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murragh FBI building in Oklahoma City in 1995 had been identified by investigative news agencies as Iraqi expatriate Hussain Al-Hussaini, an employee of Samara Properties; that this company, founded by a Palestinian with suspected PLO ties, was a place of employment for Iraqi "refugees" who were actually agents of Saddam Hussein; and that this company owned the brown truck that was reported to have been leaving the scene of the crime driven by two Arab looking men in the earliest reports after the bombing.

February 18, 2002: Unrelated: The European Union imposes sanctions on Zimbabwe after its election supervisors are kicked out of the country.

February 18, 2002: On a trip to Japan, announces that he has discussed devaluation with Japan's president. After some currency traders rush to drop their yen holdings, he corrects himself to day he meant deflation. The yen loses a half yen in value against the dollar.

February 18, 2002: Unrelated: Britain accidentally invades Spain. The training exercise was supposed to have been held a few hundred yards away on Gibraltar. Spain takes no offense, as the British troops realized their error and left within minutes.

February 18, 2002: Pakistani police find short-range missiles aimed at Karachi airport, where US air force operations are said to be based

February 18, 2002: United Nations regional coordinator Leslie Oqvist accuses the United States of intentionally targeting civilian cars during a highway bombing campaign to cut the Taliban's supply line.

February 18, 2002: Jordanian student Osama Awadallah reports being beaten by US guards at two prisons while under arrest on suspicion of having relations with terrorists. He is currently charged with perjury for reportedly lying about whether he knew a suspected hijacker.

February 18, 2002: The Guardian reports that terrorist supporter and accused cocaine trafficer John Poindexter has been appointed by Bush as the head of a new organization called the Information Awareness Office whose duties will be to spy on US civilian information networks.

February 2002: Unrelated: According to the Daily Telegraph, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz approves the refitting of AC-130 "Spectre" aircraft with a laser gun. The first "AC-X" is expected to fly in two years.

February 2002: Orders the removal from circulation of over 6000 scientific papers, many dealing with the creation of weapons of mass destruction, and urges scientific journals to censor their articles.

February 2002: Unrelated: Newspapers report that South Carolina has been keeping a databank of citizens' DNA, taken at birth, since 1995 and has given this information to law enforcement agencies and sold it to private companies.

February 19, 2002: Lawyers for British citizens being held at Camp X-Ray on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, file suit against the United States demanding that these prisoners be given the same treatment given to US citizen and al Qaeda soldier John Walker.

February 19, 2002: Unrelated: Islamic Resistance's leader Ahmed Yassin declares it a duty of all Muslims to succeed or die fighting in a war to "establish the rule of God on Earth" and "liberate yourselves from America's domination and its Jewish allies", declaring the US attack on Afghanistan a "terrorist offensive against the Muslim people". An Islamic Resistance spokesman states that Islamic Resistance has no intention of fighting outside of Israel.

February 19, 2002: The New York Times reports on the Department of Defense's Office of Strategic Influence whose purpose is to disseminate falsehoods through international media organizations.

February 19, 2002: Pakistan disbands two branches of its intelligence organizations that had ties to international terrorism.

February 19, 2002: Unrelated: The D.C. Court of Appeals revokes the Federal Communications Commission's right to set limits on media local market share ownership.

February 19, 2002: Unrelated: Free software advocates discover that a European Commission draft on the feasability of software patents was authored by the Business Software Alliance, a lobbying group with a very heavy bias towards protecting existing large companies from competition.

February 20, 2002: Iraq accuses the US of hiring mercenaries and training terrorists to attack it.

February 20, 2002: Unrelated: Hundreds die in a fire on board a passenger train in Egypt.

February 20, 2002: Unrelated: Madagascar presidential candidate Marc Ravalomanana declares himself President despite not earning 50% of the vote as is required by law.

February 20, 2002: Unrelated: Italian police arrest four men who have explosives, a cyanide compound, and maps of water systems near the US Embassy.

February 20, 2002: Unrelated: The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty is ratified. This treaty states that monopoly control over a creator's work is a right, where it has traditionally been a privledge granted by government(P); Makes no reference to the public domain other than of works which have already been released to the public domain by national copyright laws; Restricts ideas and mathematical expressions from copyright protection, where they have had copyright protection in the US under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act(2); Compilations, databases, and lists of information are now protected by copyright, whereas Feist vs. Rural rejected this idea in the US, although the information being compiled is not copyrighted(5); recognizes the copyright holder's rights as being over the sale and transfer of ownership, where traditional US law has given the holder rights over any copies made(6), and of authorizing rental(7), and of broadcasting(8); allows countries to limit the copyright holder's powers to the first sale(6); revokes the Berne Convention's allowance for countries to restrict the length of copyright over photographs(9); requires the illegalizing of "circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights", which in the US has meant any investigation into understanding how to read or play a scrambled work without paying extra money to the author beyond what is paid for the work(11); requires the illegalization of the removal of author information and licensing terms from a work, what is called "Rights Management Information", whereas "Rights Management Information" is commonly understood to mean anything which restricts an owner's ability to use the work for its intended purpose(12). The Berne Convention makes no exceptions for satire or parody when giving copyright holders sole right over creation of adaptations and alterations of their work, allowing only for use in courtrooms, speeches, and lectures(B2, B13), although it does allow countries to allow for exceptions where the copying "does not conflict with normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author"(B9), excemptions for fair use if the author is referenced(B10), and excemptions for the media(B11); Acknowledges that countries can set limits on the duration of copyright terms(B5.4a) and sets a copyright as lasting fifty years after the death of a creator(B7.1) execpting movies where countries are allowed to set the limit as fifty years from release(B7.2) and anonymous works whose copyright is to expire fifty years after public release unless the author reveals himself(B7.3).

February 21, 2002: The kidnappers of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl deliver a videotape of his execution to Pakistani authorities. According to Reuters, Pearl was executed immediately after admitting to being a Jew.

February 21, 2002: Saudi Arabia's highest ranking Muslim cleric is reported to have condemned the US in a keynote speech at the Hajj, but reports are fragmented and do not make clear exactly what he said.

February 21, 2002: A helicopter carrying 10 US soldiers crashes in water off the Philippines, killing all aboard.

February 21, 2002: Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declares that the US has ceased fighting terrorism and is now waging war to control the world's valuable natural resources.

February 21, 2002: Gives a speech promoting the advancement of liberal democratic reforms in China. The speech is broadcast across China. China censors the official transcript, removing Bush's references to God, freedom, and democracy.

February 21, 2002: The US ends its involvement in peace talks for the Sudan civil war until the Sudanese government explains an air force attack on a United Nations food distribution center.

February 22, 2002: Unrelated: South African election monitors overseeing Zimbabwe's election are nearly lynched by Mugabe supporters in an attack reminiscent of the near-lynching of Floridian election monitors by Bush supporters in the US 2000 presidential election.

February 22, 2002: The US bars Zimbabwean President Mugabe and his cabinet from entering the country. Zimbabwe declares this an assault on its national security.

February 22, 2002: The General Accounting Office of Congress sues Vice President Cheney.

February 2002: Unrelated: Zimbabwe' opposition presidential candidate and two of his party's top members are arrested and charged with high treason, punishable by execution.

February 2002: Unrelated: Italian police discover tunnels which have been burrowed underneath the US Embassy sometime in the past four weeks.

February 2002: Unrelated: Saudi Arabia offers to recognize Israel's right to exist in exchange for Israel's withdrawl from land captured from Jordan, Syria, and Egypt in the 1967 war.

February 2002: One of the suspects in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl reports that Pakistani police have placed him under duress and attempted to force him to sign a confession. Pakistan announces it will wait two weeks before pressing charges against the 3 prisoners. The US attempts to extradite the prisoners from Pakistan.

February 2002: Bush's speechwriter David Frum leaves his job. Some reports suggest he was fired after his wife told her family that he came up with the phrase "Axis of Evil", but Frum states that he quit on his own will.

February 2002: General Joe Foss (retired) has his Congressional Medal of Honor confiscated at an airport by security workers who state that it is dangerous and will be destroyed. He has to endure three strip searches before being allowed to retrieve it.

February 25, 2002: Waives sanctions against Afghanistan related to illegal drug production in order to allow aid into the country.

February 25, 2002: Reuters reports that Fidel Castro accuses the United States of launching attacks on Cuba with biological weapons to cause plagues among Cuban people and livestock.

February 26, 2002: Ten are killed in a terrorist attack on a mosque in Pakistan.

February 26, 2002: Unrelated: The BBC obtains an internal report from the aid group Save the Children which discloses a practice of forcing children to pay sexual favors for food aid. The BBC implies that some nearby United Nations troops were also involved.

February 26, 2002: Announces his support of Saudi Arabia's peace plan for Israel.

February 26, 2002: A Gallup poll of over 9,000 people in 9 predominantly Muslim countries shows, among other things, that 61% of respondents do not believe that any Arabs were behind the September 11 attack, 9% believe the US's attack on the Taliban was justified, 15% believe the September 11 attack on the United States was justified, and that only 5% of Pakistanis had a favourable view of the US.

February 27, 2002: The former Soviet republic of Georgia reveals plans to have US troops enter the country to train Georgian soldiers. Russia announces its unease.

February 27, 2002: Close to 20 workers at Logan International Airport outside Boston are arrested by federal agents.

February 27, 2002: Unrelated: A Muslim lynch mob attacks a trainful of Hindu extremists in western India, killing 58. Religious rioting breaks, killing hundreds over the next few days.

February 27, 2002: The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists changes the Doomsday Clock from 11:51 to 11:53, noting: the September 11 attacks and the world's neglect in failing to respond to them, the US's treaty-destroying nuclear aggression, the failure of nuclear-capable countries to adequately protect their stocks of fissile (fissionable?) materials and the recent increase in smuggling attempts, the India-Pakistan crisis, and the increasingly popular terrorist movement, also taking into account signs of cooperation between the nations party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and US assistance in keeping Russia's nuclear materials safe from theft.

February 28, 2002: Dozens of Cubans break into the Mexican embassy in Havana and demand refuge. Cuba blames US radio broadcasts that apparently promised Mexico would allow anyone who showed up to immigrate to Mexico. Cuban troops remove the trespassers at Mexico's request.

February 28, 2002: British troops in Kabul are fired upon. No reports of injuries.

February 28, 2002: Unrelated: Police in Montana disrupt a rebel group that had put together plans to assassinate a large number of local public officials.

February 28, 2002: Unrelated: A bomb explodes in the car of Jordan's chief anti-terrorism investigator's wife. Two passersby are killed.

February 28, 2002: The US urges Israel to be careful not to harm civilians when attacking terrorist positions.

February 28, 2002: Unrelated: Released audiotapes show that President Nixon had planned to nuke North Vietnam but his advisors were strong in dismissing the idea.

February 28, 2002: Senator Daschle announces that the War on Terrorism is a failure because Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Muhammad Omar have not yet been captured.

February 28, 2002: Camp X-Ray inmates begin a hunger strike after guards confiscate a makeshift turban from one of the men. Guards give in and announce that inmates will now be allowed to have turbans. A third of the striking inmates continue to refuse food.

March 1, 2002: It is reported that Bush has ordered certain federal managers to work outside of the District of Columbia as insurance in case the capitol is destroyed by nuclear weapons. Newspapers declare this the creation of a "secret shadow US government", but it is not clear whether these bureaucrats' work will be secret or whether they will supercede Congress as is generally the case in a "shadow govenrment".

March 1, 2002: Environmental Protection Agency Office of Regulatory Enforcement Director Eric Schaeffer resigns in protest over Bush's obstruction of the agency's ability to do its job.

March 1, 2002: Yemen and the US agree to send US soldiers to Yemen to coordinate attacks on al Qaeda targets there.

March 1, 2002: Unrelated: Packages of acid disguised as samples of skin lotion are mailed to several prominent British politicians.

March 1, 2002: Italy arrests six suspected al Qaeda members, and Turkey arrests three men suspected of joining al Qaeda to fight in Afghanistan.

March 1, 2002: Afgan officials report that the Taliban is regrouping and recruiting a new army in the mountains of Paktia province and in Pakistan.

March 2, 2002: Two Afghan troops are killed and four injured by a land mine near Camp Rhino. Reports indicate that the mine was recently planted.

March 2, 2002: Unrelated: Pope John Paul II gives a televised speech to Russian catholics. The Russian Orthodox Church announces that Poland is invading Russia.

March 2, 2002: Unrelated: Switzerland votes to join the United Nations, ending a half millenium of neutrality.

March 3, 2002: Unrelated: Over 100,000 protestors march in Rome to express their disapproval with the Fascist prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

March 3, 2002: The US uses a new "thermobaric" bomb in an attack on al Qaeda positions in eastern Afghanistan. A US soldier is killed during the assualt. The al Qaeda position is described as being far better fortified than Tora Bora, which was described as being the best fortification in the world save for the US and Russia's armageddon bunkers.

March 3, 2002: Russian President Putin announces his support of US military presence in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

March 4, 2002: A US Chinook helicopter is shot down by al Qaeda troops in Afghanistan, killing six. Two other US troops are killed and over forty wounded in attacks on al Qaeda positions in mountains south of Gardez. According to some reports, one of the US soldiers lost was captured alive by al Qaeda and executed on videotape.

March 4, 2002: Unrelated: Indian troops battle a group of irregulars invading from Pakistan, killing eight.

March 5, 2002: Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill claims that there never was a recession in 2001.

March 5, 2002: Institutes a 3-year 30% tarrif on steel. The European Union vows to retaliate.

March 5, 2002: Unrelated: Certain government ministers in Madagascar refuse to recognize the rule of unelected President Marc Ravalomanana, and declare the city of Tamatave as the new capitol. In other international news, the Army in Zimbabwe reports that its soldiers have been ordered to vote for Robert Mugabe in the presidential election, and an earthquake and flood kill over 100 in the village of Zow, Afghanistan.

March 5, 2002: Unrelated: A US soldier dies of gunfire in Kosovo. The Army reports that there were no hostilities, leaving the possibilities that the soldier died of an accident or friendly fire.

March 5, 2002: China expresses "strong opposition and dissatisfaction" to the United States' condemning its oppression of Muslims and Christians.

March 5, 2002: According to reports from several different and independent news sources, Robert Ray, successor to Independant Counsel Kenneth Starr, releases an official report concluding that Clinton's having had a blowjob from an intern was sufficient evidence to indict and convict him at that time for the perjury that he would later give about the situation.

March 5, 2002: Urges the Senate to confirm the judgeship of Charles Pickering.

March 6, 2002: The LA Times reports that Bush has changed welfare policy so that government supplied jobs for welfare workers no longer qualify as jobs under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Bush immediately changes the policy back and announces he never intended to change the policy.

March 6, 2002: The day before the UN is to meet with Iraq, the US shows to the UN satellite photograps purporting to show aid trucks being equipped as missile carriers in violation UN policy.

March 6 or 7, 2002: Bush waves at Stevie Wonder.

_________________Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you...